Extracting Honey with Roy

August 16, 2011

I met Roy, a local hobby beekeeper during a recent garden tour on our property.  He was interested in our bees and mentioned that if I wanted to learn about extracting honey that he would be willing to assist me.  At that time I thought that my own extractor would get here in time and wouldn't need his assistance.  However, it turned out that my extractor would not arrive until September and I called him up to throw myself upon his mercy.  Roy was only too happy to help.  Roy is retired and has turned his little bee hobby into a growing business.  He started with one hive and now has 16...most of the hives are in Aylmer on his brother's property but he has four hives here in London in his own yard.  He is starting to sell his honey and other products.

We chose a sunny day to do the extraction and I took part of the day off work.  It was a beautiful day and Roy was sitting waiting for me ready to go.  He had brought his own smoker, a blower, some boxes to put the frames into for transport and his bee suit. We were strangers with only beekeeping in common and we were going to spend an entire day together.  A daunting proposition.

We went into the beeyard and chatted a bit about how we wanted to work and then started.  

Getting ready

We decided to start with Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons and as it turned out, queen of honey production too as it turned out!  Roy had a battery driven blower that he wanted to use to blow off the bees from the frames.  Roy quickly realized that my bees are very gentle and didn't need blowing.  After the first frame we both switched to brushes and brushed all the bees off.  Roy used a natural bristle paint brush and I used a natural bristle drafting brush. Both worked.  

First fully capped frame

In Hippolyta we found 14 frames of fully capped honey available for the taking.  After brushing off each frame we placed it in a box with a lid so that the bees wouldn't try to go back to it.  The bees were great while we worked on Hippolyta and Roy and I worked really well together.

We finished Hippolyta and then moved the boxes full of frames to Roy's truck.  We then opened up Queen Elizabeth I.  She had 10 frames of capped honey and we went through the same procedure with her.  Generally the bees were uninterested in what we were doing but one found a weak point between Roy's glove and sleeve and stung him through the cloth.  This was the only sting of the day.  Sweat was pouring down our faces and fogging our glasses but I found it rather comforting to share these difficulties with a fellow beekeeper.  We finished Elizabeth and got out of our suits to share a welcome glass of lemonade on our deck.  I showed off my gorgeous food grade buckets that I bought  here in London.  Bill had installed honey gates bought on-line from dancing bee apiaries.  Roy was suitably impressed...and envious!

Gorgeous honey buckets

Loading up the boxes at the truck.

The whole process of taking all the frames from the hives and clearing them of bees took us about 1 1/2 hours.  Roy headed home and we had a bit of lunch and then I went to Roy's house with buckets for honey and wax.  The next step in the process would be extracting the honey from each frame.  Roy has an extractor that can handle two frames at a time.  It is a hand turned extractor.  Roy is lucky to have an extra kitchen in which to do his honey work in.  It has a fridge, stove, lots of room and most importantly, a double sink to clean up in...honey is a sticky business.

Two frame extractor with bucket and strainers

Before we can extract the honey we must take the wax off of the cells.

Education moment (yawn):  Foraging bees bring nectar back to the hive and give it to house bees who change it from complex sugars to simple sugars by adding invertase to it.  The house bees put this changed substance into the wax cells.  The nectar is about 80% moisture when it arrives and needs to be ventilated to a moisture content of about 17-18% before it is considered honey.  The bees do this by whirring their wings...from outside the hive as well as inside it...that's where the buzzing comes from.  They are constantly ventilating to either warm up the hive or cool it down to 30 degrees.  Once the honey is the right moisture content, the house bees cap the cell with a thin layer of wax.  After a frame of honey has about 80% capped cells on it, it is ready to extract.  If a frame has too many uncapped cells in it, the honey will be too full of moisture and will ferment.  

Back to our extracting adventure!  The wax on the cells can be taken off in a number of ways.  Roy is a creative beekeeper and accidentally discovered that he could melt the wax with a heat gun.  It is extremely slick.  We took off the wax on one side each of two frames and put them into the extractor which is really a large centrifuge with a geared turning handle on top.

Melting the cappings

One side completely melted

Melted wax with honey and debris

Cappings from the cells

The frames go into two baskets in the extractor.  A few spins of the handle and the frames come out.  The other side is melted and back into the extractor it goes.  We then inspected the frames to see if all cells were emptied.  Any cells that were still capped we opened with the capping scratcher and then it all got spun again, once each side.  It is a time consuming  process.  The opening of the cells with the scratcher gives us some wax from each frame and we scraped that into a pot. Once all the frames were done, we ended up with a bunch of wax scrapings ready to melt.  Roy melted it down so that the wax would separate from the honey and the debris and I could take it home to melt it down once again.  I was excited about the beeswax since I know that the ladies in the wardrobe at work would be able to use it to strengthen their threads and also to keep the thread from tangling.  I am not particularly interested in crafts but the idea of the beeswax having a practical purpose is appealing to me.

Honey flowing from extractor through 2 strainers into bucket

72 lbs!!!

Frame going into extractor

We extracted 72 lbs of honey from the frames!  Each of my beautiful buckets was 1/2 full of incredible golden honey.  24 frames with 3 lbs of honey on each one...the math that I was told to expect was indeed correct.  After the lengthy clean up, I headed out with the precious honey and the empty frames.  I was at Roy's for about 3 1/2 hours including a little tour of his beeyard.  As soon as I got home I gave the empty frames back to the bees.  I know that they will set to work immediately to clean out the wax cells and repair any that I wrecked to make them totally pristine.  Then the foragers will start to fill them again with nectar.  There are still some weeks of summer left for honey production.  There may even be another harvest in September...eeek....as long as I leave about 60-80 lbs in the hive for over-wintering.


Of course, the first thing Bill and I did was taste our honey and then pull our first bottle of 100% pure honey made by urban bees.  It has a flavour of sage! Probably from that patch of sage in my garden I talked about earlier.  We are very proud and here are pictures of Bill pulling that first bottle and a picture of our beautiful first bottle of honey.

After the bottling I decided to melt the bit of wax that we collected.  I  put it into egg cups to make small chunks of beeswax for the wardrobe to use.  The wax smells sweet like honey and has a lovely warm yellow colour.  It's almost good enough to eat!


So that is the extracting adventure.  I learned so much and loved being with another beekeeper while I worked.   All in all, it was a lovely day and extremely fulfilling.  Now for the bottling, labeling and best of all, eating!  Yummmmm.

Not just Honey Bees in the garden

Honey Bee on Echinacea

August 7, 2011

A thunder storm with the sun shining through it has just started so it's a good time to write a new post for you.  There must be a spectacular rainbow somewhere close by.  This post will just be a picture gallery of what is going on in my garden...not just Bees!

Update on the bees...I just bought a honey extractor on-line.  So the adventure of stickiness will be coming to a theatre near you.  I will madly bone up on how this all works and then let you know all about it.  I am estimating about 80 pounds of honey will be available to extract.  An exciting and a bit frightening prospect.  My nearest and dearest can expect bottles of honey for Christmas, birthdays, anniversaries etc. etc. etc.  The bees don't know that all their hard work will be going into my new extractor very soon.

What is blooming in the garden?  Echinacea, phlox, black eyed Susans, butterfly bush, hosta, day lilies, cosmos (orange and pink), monarda (bee balm is its other name but you already know that it is shunned by the honey bees), rose of Sharon, canna lilies, dahlias, goose neck loosestrife and rudbeckia of every sort.

Wherever we walk, we disturb the many grasshoppers who have taken up residence.  It's been so dry, they are everywhere.  Margot, the cat loves chasing them...especially the ones that can fly!

The following are pictures of what comes around to check out the flowers.  Here are a few of the beautiful butterflies that come into the garden.  I have been chasing a gorgeous yellow swallowtail for a photograph but it doesn't seem to want to stop for a photo op.  Also various bees and wasps busy pollinating.

Cabbage butterfly

Red-spotted Purple Swallowtail on Echinacea--inside colours

Red-spotted Purple Swallowtail--outside colours

Snout nosed butterfly on butterfly bush--outside colours

Bumble bee on Rudbeckia

Snout nosed butterfly--inside colours (a bit)

Yellow jacket wasp on Queen Anne's lace

Monster bumble bee on phlox

Finally it rains!

Saturday July 24/Sunday July 25   Garden Gates Open

It has been extremely dry for three weeks and we are on Garden Gates Open.  This is a self-guided tour  and this season had about 60 gardens on view in London and surrounding areas.  Our garden was listed as having bee hives to make sure that anyone who was scared would be aware.  Our garden is watered only with rainwater and by the time the tour came along, we had only a bit of water in two of our six rain barrels and the rest were completely empty.  I refuse to use city water on flowers but I was so close to breaking that rule.  Even my day lilies, usually so tough, had dried out buds and crispy leaves. So many of the rest of the perennials were drooping badly.  We showed the gardens regardless and discovered that many people came specifically to see the hives.

One man came who was a bee keeper himself.  He started with one hive  as a hobby with his brother and three years later they have 16 hives.  This is not an unusual story and I could feel Bill rolling his eyes at hearing this one.  A lovely couple came to see them after having seen a documentary about the loss of bee colonies.  They gave me their heartfelt thanks for keeping them and hopes for the survival of the hives over the winter.  It was heart warming and made me feel determined to keep them alive.

That night the skies opened up and it rained!  So much rain fell that our street flooded and looked like a river.  Gorgeous...though it was a hard rain, not the soft kind that is so lovely for farmers and gardeners alike.  I didn't complain though since all of our rain barrels were filled to the brim that night.  The next day, the garden was lush for the tour and even glistened a bit. A couple brought their young grandson to see the bees and found it difficult to tear him away from them.  So many visitors were aware of the crisis that is facing bees and were so interested in the few stories that I could tell them...and I am such a newcomer to this world!  Here are some pictures from the day of the tour.

View from our deck

Blue jay waiting his turn at the peanuts

Grackle at the bird bath

Hosta garden at front of property

Wed July 27  Excluding the Queen

Surprise, surprise, it's hot and sunny and I'm out working the bees!  It was time to add a queen excluder to each of the hives.  The queen excluder is a plastic screen that has holes big enough for the workers and the drones to get through but too small for the queen.  The reason we add this excluder is to keep the queen from laying eggs in the frames that we want the honey to be stored in.  I held off adding the excluders until the end of July but now we are getting serious about honey production.

Queen Elizabeth I had a little bit less honey in the top super but was still ready to have a new empty super added for honey production.  I went into every super to make sure that her Majesty wasn't hanging out and when I was sure, I added the excluder between the second and third boxes and left her to her laying.  You may remember that I added newspaper between the split colony and the donor colony.  Lots of the newspaper was taken away, but look where the rest of it ended up...on the bottom of the hive in a soft fuzzy layer.

Bottom trays--right one covered in chewed up newspaper.
Left one from under Hippolyta.

I then put Elizabeth back together, adding a super so the workers can continue drawing out comb and filling them with nectar.  Then on to Hippolyta.  She is remarkable for honey production.  The top super is almost full with 8 capped frames full of honey.  I put in a queen excluder and then added a super.  We are definitely ready to extract some honey so that will have to be our next adventure.  Here are the proud hives...high five (sorry)!

Five high hives