Unless you are fortunate enough to have a purpose built extraction room, honey extraction usually takes place in the kitchen or, in the shed.

Before starting, the floor will need protection from the inevitable drips of honey and the odd pieces of sticky wax and propolis. Newspaper is suitable for this, or sheets of cardboard, or any other absorbent material that will soak up any spillages. I use plastic sheeting which can be mopped and used again each year.

When processing a food like honey, hygiene should be your first priority. Wear a clean overall or apron to protect you from the honey but, most of all the honey from you!  All utensils should be made from stainless steel, or food grade polythene, and water should be on hand to wash sticky fingers (best to wear disposable nitrile gloves) and knives etc. (Read more on “Hygiene Regulations” when extracting & bottling honey). When the supers are brought in, an upturned hive roof or tray is useful to stand them in, to catch any drops from fractured combs. A second tray/roof is required, and a spare super to receive the wet frames following extraction. An uncapping utensil is required. This is usually a heated (electrically or, via a hot water tray) uncapping knife or, an uncapping fork. It’s easier if you use a heated knife, it slides through the wax easier, with fewer cappings clinging to it. If you use a water heated knife, it should be wiped dry before each use, to avoid adding any excess moisture to the honey. Some people like to uncap running the knife upwards, and some prefer downwards, but which ever way is preferred, great care should be taken to keep fingers and hands guarded. The frame is uncapped holding one of the lugs, while the other one is rested in a non‐slip position on the uncapping tray. An uncapping tray is a very useful device when dealing with several supers, but if only two or three are involved, then a smaller receptacle, such as a large tray or a meat dish, will suffice. If you haven’t done it before, it will be stickier than you think, as you can see from this short video:

The uncapping process involves running the knife just under the cappings, removing as little as possible, in order that there are not masses of cappings to deal with later, and the thickest comb possible can be returned to the bees. In selecting the combs for uncapping one invariably finds that not all the cells are capped. The reason for this is that the bees have not been given sufficient time to reduce the moisture content adequately, and if too much of this is included in the extracted honey, we run the risk of fermentation in our stored honey. A general rule of thumb is that if the frame is seventy five per cent capped, and when held horizontally no honey shakes out from the unsealed cells, then it is ripe enough to extract. If however, a large part of the frame is unsealed, or, honey does shake out, then any such frames should be placed in a separate super, and returned to the bees for them to complete the work. This might result in the bees using this honey themselves, but that is much better than ending up with buckets of fermenting honey.

When loading the extractor, it is advisable to place consecutive frames on opposite sides of the extractor. Consecutive frames in the super are usually of a similar weight, and if the extractor is well balanced, it will prevent wobble during rotation.

There are two types of extractor, radial and tangential.

Top View of Frame Arrangement in Tangential vs Radial Extractors. Arrow Shows Direction of Force on the Frame

In a radial extractor, the frames are placed in position radiating from the centre like the spokes of a wheel, with the top bars furthest from the centre. Utilising the slight upward angle of the cells to the midrib of the comb, both sides of the frame can be extracted at the same time, using a slow rotation to begin with, and then speeding up as the combs empty and become lighter.

Using the tangential extractor involves placing the frames within a cage, where they rotate at a tangent to the centre. This results in greater centrifugal force being placed upon the honey in cells on the outer side of the comb, but the honey on the inner side is being forced against the midrib, and great care must be taken that the comb does not fracture or, “blow out” of the frame. The usual procedure is to rotate the first side slowly, and partially empty the cells, then turn the frames over, and fully empty the second side, then turn them back and complete the extraction of the first side.

The extracted honey can be run from the extractor into honey buckets. It will then need straining through a course strainer to remove any pieces of wax, and a straining cloth to remove minute particles of propolis etc. This process can be greatly facilitated by gently warming the honey for a few hours, when it will be liquid enough to pour straight through both mediums. It is then caught in a suitable receptacle, and allowed to stand for twenty four hours, to allow all the air bubbles obtained during the process, to rise to the surface, where they can be skimmed off. A honey tank, which incorporates a strainer at the top and a honey valve at the bottom, is ideal for this, but again, if smaller quantities are involved, then more manual solutions should be found. Kitchen strainers can be useful in these circumstances. The honey can then be either bottled, or run into clean honey buckets to be stored for bottling as required (remember most honey granulates and reheating sealed, labelled, honey jars to return the honey to its liquid state is not recommended!

The cappings can then be dealt with, as there is usually a substantial quantity of honey left in them, and the wax itself is valuable. If a small amount is involved, then once again the colander or kitchen strainer can be utilised to drain the honey from the cappings. This can be achieved by leaving to drain over night, in a warm room, into a suitable receptacle. This honey should be processed in a similar manner to that which came from the extractor. The remaining cappings can be spread out on a tray, and placed over the crownboard of a hive, where the bees will come up through the feed holes, and clear all traces of honey, leaving dry particles of beeswax which can be taken away and rendered. If an uncapping tray is being used, the cappings should be left on the tray for twenty‐four hours, for as much honey as possible to drain away.

Pollen in Super

At this point two anomalies should be considered. One concerns pollen and the other granulated honey. Most of our bees do not follow the rule of putting pollen only in the brood chamber. Invariably, we find some stored amongst the honey in the supers. This is not a huge problem, as the pollen doesn’t usually spin out during the extraction process, but it does sometimes have the effect of unbalancing the extractor, causing the machine to wobble during rotation. This can be overcome by moving frames around to rebalance the load.

Granulated combs are a rather more difficult problem to deal with. It’s usually discovered during the uncapping process, and sometimes involves a part of the comb, and sometimes the entire frame. When granulation in a frame is discovered, you need to consider which is most valuable to you?…… the honey or the comb. If there is only a little granulated honey in an otherwise extractable frame, then you might decide to extract what is possible, and return the rest to the bees. If, on the other hand, the bulk of the comb is granulated, then the honey might be considered more valuable than the comb. The only realistic way of then harvesting this honey is by the use of a heated uncapping tray. The entire comb is cut out of the frame and placed on the tray, where both honey and wax will melt and run into the separator.

When extracting is finished, you will be left with supers of very sticky frames. These are best dealt with by returning them to their original hives for the bees to clean up. This is best done close to dusk when the bees have finished flying for the day, the roof can be removed, and wet supers stacked above the crownboard, so that the bees can come up through the feed holes, clean up our wet frames, and take any honey they can glean, back down into the hive. During this process care must be taken not initiate robbing (you really don’t want this to happen). A crownboard should be placed on top of the wet supers, with the feed holes covered, and any gaps or loose joints in the supers should be sealed. The entrance to the hive should be reduced, to make it easier to defend against opportunistic robbers. The supers can be left in place for two or three days, depending on the number of supers to be cleaned, and the strength of the colony doing the job. After this, they can once again be cleared of bees, and taken away to be stacked & stored for the winter.