Extracting Honey From The Combs
When combs are filled with honey by the bees, they are “capped” with a white wax capping. This capping is impervious to air and the honey sealed inside will keep indefinitely - or until the colony require it for consumption. The bees then remove the capping and the honey is used to sustain the colony. The beekeeper harvests the sealed comb (and if sensible replaces it with bee-candy made from sugar). Bees do NOT get diabetes!!
The frames laden with capped honey are removed to the “honey processing facility”. Here the frames have the cappings sliced off (pictures to follow) with a heated “uncapping knife”. The cappings (a mixture of honey and wax) go into an uncapping tray and the de-capped frames are placed in a centrifuge (usually called a “honey spinner”). Honey spinners come in all sizes, from a two frame plastic item suitable for a back-garden beekeeper with one or two hives, right up to a 100 frame stainless-steel horizontal drum spinner as an integral part of a honey-processing production line costing tens of thousands of pounds.
Fortunately for the aspiring (? perspiring) beekeeper expanding his/her operation there are many spinners from which to choose, representing the many steps between the two extremes. Until now, Top Class Honey has been using a nine-frame, food-grade, plastic spinner that is/was hand-cranked. This is suitable for up to eight hives or so. We have thirteen. In 2019 we had a reasonably good year and carried ten supers (honey boxes) out of our apiary. They contained 100 frames of honey. Hand-cranking the spinner for this number resulted in exhaustion and arm-cramp. Also risking forearms like Popeye. Realising that we had outgrown the spinner we have invested in our first really professional piece of equipment
Liz in full gloat mode
This is Liz in our hive-making workshop unpacking our new spinner. The workshop is unheated and freezing cold (hence my jacket). We have waited a long time for this. Electrically driven with programmable electronic control, multiple speeds, multiple modes. Highly efficient extraction. 12 frames. It has the potential to increase extraction efficiency by 15% - 20%. (And no arm cramp!!) The whole machine is made of stainless steel and therefore easy to sterilise.
The spinner is a central part of honey processing. Our next aquisition will be a stainless steel100 litre heated honey storage tank. (In the hive the bees keep the honey warm and liquid. If left to cool to room temperature, pure honey (unlike supermarket honey) will eventually granulate - and if left long enough become almost solid.)
We will post more pictures of the spinner in action next spring (2020) when the next batch of frames come out of the hives.