Finally! Extracting for the first time this weekend!!

[Beeracuda]

I think I have all my stuff together and we are going to extract on Saturday.  Do you have any tips or tricks you would like to share?  Anything that I definitely don't want to do?

Here are the items I have accumulated so far.

Extractor
Uncapping tank
Uncapping knife-Plain Jane freebie
Capping scratcher-Also a freebie
Fume Board, Honey-B-Gone & bee brush
4 wheel dolly and straps for moving supers
Food grade buckets & lids for honey, 1 with honey gate
1 extra honey gate, just in case
Refractometer

Have I forgotten anything? 

I still need to get a clean tarp to put down in the kitchen.  Hopefully we (and by we, I mean me!) won't make too big of a mess.  I am glad Jill can put up with a little mess.

I am going to order containers after we extract and figure out how many we need.  I can pick them up the same or following day from Walker Honey Farm.  They are close and their prices are very good.

Do you mix the honey from the different hives or keep it separate?  I think we will get a super (9 frames) each from two hives and possibly two supers from one hive. 

I could also take a deep frame or two from a couple of hives.  They had the top deeps completely full of honey the last time I looked.  They had lots of leftover honey in the top brood chambers after last "winter".  If I were to do this, I would definitely keep this separate from the other honey I extract.

Thanks for taking the time to answer my newbee questions.  I feel like I should already know more after one year of keeping bees.  But, last year we were only able to get a couple of frames and we did the crush and strain method.

[Jen]

Tips and Tricks is sending me a jar of honey to sample... need to test it to make sure it's not poisoned ya see 

[LazyBkpr]

LOL @ Jen...

   Towels and rags to wipe stuff with. Doesnt matter how hard you try, that sticky stuff will get everywhere.. I find that keeping up with it as I go makes the process go nicer and the clean up at the end a little less tedious..   
   Uncapping knife, Plane Jane freebie..   A hot knife or something like a bread knife?
   If you use the hot knife, DO NOT wear the rubber gloves. Wear something a little more substantial..  when, not if, the honey splatters a bit trying to get ALL the cappings off, it HAS to feel a lot like Napalm..   I have never been hit with Napalm.. Obviously...  But the honey coming off that knife is close enough for me.   I believe the next batch will be done with a bread knife.  I will heat a pot of water to drop it in after each decapping..   
   Also.. if you do that, use a pot you never intend to use for anything else, that ring of wax that forms is a BEAR to scrub out so the wife won't notice..   

[Beeracuda]

LOL @ Jen...

     
   Uncapping knife, Plane Jane freebie..   A hot knife or something like a bread knife?

I will heat a pot of water to drop it in after each decapping..   
   Also.. if you do that, use a pot you never intend to use for anything else, that ring of wax that forms is a BEAR to scrub out so the wife won't notice..   

This one looks the the electric heated knives that you see, but did not have a heater. I also have a bread knife and a filet knife.  I will see which works best and use the.

And Jen, I'm sorry, but I think you are out of luck.  I think everything we make is spoken for.  I don't know how much Jill is planning on keeping for baking and our use.  We used quite a bit in the last year.

[G3farms]

A couple of tele covers or a couple of pieces of plywood the size of (or a little bigger) than the outside dimensions of your supers. If using a tele cover turn it upside down and place your first honey super in it then cover with another tele cover or plywood. This keeps the bees out of the supers while you are working on getting the next one. You can set off major robbing with a honey super with no bees in it.

The honey will extract easier while the honey is still warm from outside. Bring it in the house and let them set for several hours in the air conditioning and it will start the cool off and get thicker which makes it harder to extract.
 
You did not mention anything about a strainer to filter out the bits of wax cappings and a few bee legs. They make one that fits on the top of a 5 gallon bucket that works great.

After I get filtered honey in a 5 gallon bucket I cover over with plastic food wrap and put a rubber band around it and sit it between the sliding glass door and shade for the sun to warm it up. A day or so in the warm sun and it will settle out the air bubbles, plus be warm for filling bottles. Sitting it in the car is also another good choice.

Make up some labels so you will have repeat customers next year.


Best of all.........glad to hear you are feeling better and up to the task!

[Beeracuda]

Best of all.........glad to hear you are feeling better and up to the task!

I appreciate that.  Only one more treatment to go!

A couple of tele covers or a couple of pieces of plywood the size of (or a little bigger) than the outside dimensions of your supers.

I have a couple that I was planning on using.

The honey will extract easier while the honey is still warm from outside. Bring it in the house and let them set for several hours in the air conditioning and it will start the cool off and get thicker which makes it harder to extract.

When I roll the supers in the house, they will go in the pantry...with the hot water heater.  It is always warm in there.  I will put a dehumidifier in there to make sure the humidity isn't too high.

You did not mention anything about a strainer to filter out the bits of wax cappings and a few bee legs. They make one that fits on the top of a 5 gallon bucket that works great.

I forgot to put that on my list.  I have the stainless one.

Make up some labels so you will have repeat customers next year.

I have a buddy working on a logo for the labels right now.   

Thanks!  Keep them coming!!

[iddee]

If you put them in the pantry for 3 to 5 days, you will have hundreds of wax moth and SHB larva. Either extract the same day or freeze them for 3 days and then warm them up in the pantry.

[Bamabww]

You mentioned getting a tarp for the floor covering. I always use cardboard and then I can throw it away after the bees have cleaned up the droppings.

You'll need a long handle for a spatula to wipe the last several ounces of honey out of the extractor. That's the only thing I dislike about my extractor. The gate valve is almost an 1" off the bottom and will not allow all the honey to drain out. It's a pita.
I use a 3/4 inch piece of hardwood about 3 feet long taped to a spatula. It's a lot of help, especially if your arms are too big to fit between the extractor frame holders and the sides.

Lay your waterhose out in the sun and fill it with water. Makes cleaning the extractor much easier.

I'm not sure if this is your very first time to harvest honey but I wished I'd kept a jar from each year I harvested honey just for future comparison.

If you use the electric knife, you'll need something or somewhere to lay it that can handle the heat.

Good luck and enjoy.

[G3farms]

Just exactly as Iddee said!!

I would extract as soon as it comes into the house myself.

[riverbee]

congrats!!!! wooohhoooo!!!!

me three, i would extract as soon as it comes into the house....

you asked about mixing the honey from different hives or keeping it separate, i typically don't, everything goes together, unless i have a bloom i am   watching, this year it's buckwheat.....those frames or boxes are set aside.  i would just mix all that fine honey together!

your uncapping knife....the plain jane freebie..........does it have a serrated blade?  or the bread knife, they work good.....get a cake pan. heat up and boil some water, pour it in the cake pan (enough to cover/heat up the blade of the knife) and stick that knife in that hot water to heat your knife up. (doesn't take long). wipe it off with a clean towel, and uncap, sure works better than trying to uncap the frames with a 'cold knife'.  just repeat the process with hot water, wiping it off, and changing out the hot water to keep heat on the blade. hope this makes sense?

have fun!  ENJOY!!!

[Beeracuda]

If you put them in the pantry for 3 to 5 days, you will have hundreds of wax moth and SHB larva. Either extract the same day or freeze them for 3 days and then warm them up in the pantry.

Just exactly as Iddee said!!

I would extract as soon as it comes into the house myself.

I am planning on extracting right away.  I was just going to use that as a holding area while I do one super at a time.

You mentioned getting a tarp for the floor covering. I always use cardboard and then I can throw it away after the bees have cleaned up the droppings.

That's a great idea.  I have plenty of that at work.

You'll need a long handle for a spatula to wipe the last several ounces of honey out of the extractor. That's the only thing I dislike about my extractor. The gate valve is almost an 1" off the bottom and will not allow all the honey to drain out. It's a pita.
I use a 3/4 inch piece of hardwood about 3 feet long taped to a spatula. It's a lot of help, especially if your arms are too big to fit between the extractor frame holders and the sides.

I have a flat bottom scoop for just that reason.

Lay your waterhose out in the sun and fill it with water. Makes cleaning the extractor much easier.

I'm not sure if this is your very first time to harvest honey but I wished I'd kept a jar from each year I harvested honey just for future comparison.

If you use the electric knife, you'll need something or somewhere to lay it that can handle the heat.

Good luck and enjoy.

I haven't thought about the water hose.  That will definitely work with the heat we have right now.

I wish I had kept a little more honey.  We only have about 4 oz left from last year.

No electric knife this year.  I pretty much blew the budget on the extractor.  I didn't want to have to rely on someone else for that and I only wanted to make that purchase once.

[Beeracuda]

congrats!!!! wooohhoooo!!!!

me three, i would extract as soon as it comes into the house....

you asked about mixing the honey from different hives or keeping it separate, i typically don't, everything goes together, unless i have a bloom i am   watching, this year it's buckwheat.....those frames or boxes are set aside.  i would just mix all that fine honey together!

your uncapping knife....the plain jane freebie..........does it have a serrated blade?  or the bread knife, they work good.....get a cake pan. heat up and boil some water, pour it in the cake pan (enough to cover/heat up the blade of the knife) and stick that knife in that hot water to heat your knife up. (doesn't take long). wipe it off with a clean towel, and uncap, sure works better than trying to uncap the frames with a 'cold knife'.  just repeat the process with hot water, wiping it off, and changing out the hot water to keep heat on the blade. hope this makes sense?

have fun!  ENJOY!!!

We primarily are surrounded by wildflowers here.  I don't know how much difference there would be hive to hive.

I will definitely use the pan of hot water and the towel.  I got the knife from an old time beekeeper.  He gave away a bunch of his tools at one of the bee club meetings.  It looks just like the electric knife with no cord and no serrations. 

[riverbee]

mix all the great honey together bc!

okay, the knife, it's a 'cold knife'............i use an uncapping plane by maxant, BUT, i have had the heating element burn out on me in the middle of extraction/uncapping so i keep a cold knife, and a serrated bread knife on hand as backups.  i heat them in hot water because i use 8 frames in my supers not 9, so uncapping these gets labor intensive without heat on the blade.

i found a video demonstration by brushy mountain, he has not heated the blade, but heat sure does make it go quicker! 

[Bamabww]

If you put them in the pantry for 3 to 5 days, you will have hundreds of wax moth and SHB larva. Either extract the same day or freeze them for 3 days and then warm them up in the pantry.

Wow! I have been extremely lucky. While I was the sole caregiver for my late father-in-law and my dad, both at the same time, I've left my honey supers on cardboard in my air conditioned utility room for up to a week at a time and had no problem with either wax moths or SHB. I rarely ever extract the same day I pull the supers.

[tbonekel]

If you put them in the pantry for 3 to 5 days, you will have hundreds of wax moth and SHB larva. Either extract the same day or freeze them for 3 days and then warm them up in the pantry.

Okay, I'm scratching my head on this one. I don't really see a reason to keep it too long, but if they become overrun with moth and/or beetle larva, that must mean the eggs are in the honey or comb at the time of extraction, right? I guess they could be on the frames or the super, but how often does that happen? This year, I extracted the same day. I couldn't wait!

[LazyBkpr]

Have not had any issues with SHB "yet" but wax moth seem to appear out of nowhere. Perfectly beautiful capped frames of honey. Stacked one on top of the other and sealed up in a contractors bag..   five days later there is not ONE of those supers that is not leaking honey with at least one trail through it.
   I have FROZEN my frames. Taken them from the freezer, stacked them, still fozen in my garage, top and bottom sealed with tele covers.. left them for four or fivce days to thaw and warm, and had the entire stack destroyed..     I honestly do not know how it is possible.
   I had a frame of wonky comb my wife wanted to put up on the kitchen cabinets..  I froze it for about a week, took it out and put it where she wanted it..  a week later I was walking past it and looked up, and saw webs in it..
   Open to the air and light made no difference. It was even DRY comb with no honey etc in it.
   The only thing I have found that makes a difference is moth crystals, which reek...  and the BT I have tried. Nothing touched the frames I have in my swarm traps.  Of course, that wont help with frames full of honey.
   Did the eggs survive the freezing? How did I get wax moth in the honey frames that were sealed? Sealed.... Duct tape around the seems, tele cover on bottom and top with 50 lbs weight from my weight bar on top.    Wax moth are HORRIBLE here.....

[riverbee]

"the eggs are in the honey or comb at the time of extraction, right? I guess they could be on the frames or the super, but how often does that happen?"

yes tbone, and it does happen. we don't have shb, we do have wax moths.  i setup and try to extract/get started the same day, and finish it the next day or all in one day. as far as the comb honey frames, those are pulled as soon as it's capped, cut, left to drain overnight, packaged, and in the freezer they go.

[Beeracuda]

mix all the great honey together bc!

okay, the knife, it's a 'cold knife'............i use an uncapping plane by maxant, BUT, i have had the heating element burn out on me in the middle of extraction/uncapping so i keep a cold knife, and a serrated bread knife on hand as backups.  i heat them in hot water because i use 8 frames in my supers not 9, so uncapping these gets labor intensive without heat on the blade.

I will probably save at least a jar of honey from each hive as they are extracted.  It will be interesting to see the flavor differences, if any, between the hives.  They are in pairs on the hive stands and the stands are about 10-15 feet apart.

I wanted to get the Maxant uncapping plane and the powered 3100P extractor, but with everything else that has gone on this year, I thought I better wait and upgrade later.  The cold knife should do the trick, but it will definitely be slower.  We don't have that much to uncap, so it shouldn't be too bad.

I can't wait to see if my swarm hive filled out the second super or not.  I went ahead a put another super with foundation on it two weeks ago thinking the flow was over.  I took a peek last Saturday and they had drawn out about half of the foundation and they had been storing nectar.

This is a swarm from one of our hives.  The filled out two deeps of foundation in no time.  I put the first super on it and it was full in two weeks time and 7 of the 9 frames were completely capped.  They really surprised me.

[Beeracuda]

I pulled 3 9-frame supers today and have 2 extracted so far.  Things for next year will definitely be a heated knife and a motor for the extractor.

One more of the supers was full, but not capped.  When I put the extracted supers back on, should I put one above the uncapped super or not?

[Jen]

Such healing work here Beer, raising your bees and reaping the golden goods! Makes me happy