Last week we removed the super of honey so this week we arrived earlier than usual and Keith came with his 4 frame tangential extractor, newspaper, buckets, sieves, aprons and large knife.
Capped frames of honey in super ready for extraction
The first task was to remove the cappings that hold the honey in the frame cells. The large knife was warmed in hot water and then drawn across the frames and the cappings were collected. Honey is very sticky – especially when it goes where it should not so reducing spill and confining honey to places we want it to be is crucial.
The knife being warmed in hot water
Once the knife has done its job the frames are placed inside the tangential framework of the extractor. Larger extractors are ‘radial’ – the frames are placed more like spokes in a wheel and both sides of a greater number of frames can be extracted at once. In a tangential extractor the frames need to be turned so that both sides can be extracted.
Frames in extractor
A radial extractor, especially a large one, takes up so much room to store that it can be a problem. Many societies buy a large radial extractor which takes up to 20 frames at a time and is electrically driven. Even though our quantity of honey was small this year I think by the end of the session everyone hoped that next year we could borrow an electric one from a local society for the modest fee which is usually of the order of £5.
The weight of each frame of honey can come as a real surprise to the unwary. When spun round their combined weight can cause an extractor to appear to rock rather precariously and sometimes rather ominously. Various schemes such as using legs to make the height more comfortable and then anchoring the legs onto a wooden frame so that we can stand on part of it to add to stability have been enthusiastically suggested to tame this lumbering giant but I am not sure that anyone has been truly successful.
Concentrating
Most of us took turns at turning the handle. The men did so with much macho energy and the female contingent seemed to decide that style and rhythm was more important than brute force. My stance was to explain I needed to be in charge of the camera. I had purchased a drill driven extractor knowing my ability to turn handles for long was going to be low and seeing the efforts confirmed I had probably made the right decision in my Giordan purchase.
At long last we thought we had spun out as much as possible – time to open the honey gate and allow the golden liquid to flow sinuously through the mesh sieve and into the honey bucket. When it had time to settle we would move it to jars.
Four hands better than two
Why the sieve? Pieces of wax and bits of bee can get into the honey and most customers would not be impressed.
The small amount of honey that dripped onto paper was eagerly sampled – almost fought over. The difference between real natural honey and the more blended (and older?) supermarket stock still came as a surprise to some of the novice beekeepers.
Once we had finished it was time to clear up and start the weekly inspection down at the
apiary.NB I have converted these photos to smaller size or I will run out of free space on WordPress. This may or may not lead to a deteriation in quality. Time will tell, but online the higher quality cannot always bee seen fully and it adds to load time.
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