Prepping for Honey Harvest 2024

September 11, 2024

This is our 6th year of harvesting honey, and we have learned quite a few things along the way.

Our first couple of years of harvesting honey we used the “crush and strain” method. This consists of crushing the honey comb to get all of the honey out, and then straining the honey through filters to remove wax and any bees that got caught up in the wax and honey. This is a pretty messy process that took up a lot of our kitchen space, and although it can be fun, it is not an efficient method for harvesting honey as we increased the number of bee hives we maintained.

Our third honey harvest we purchased a manual honey extractor. Our manual honey extractor is a barrel like container that holds 3 frames at a time. After loading in the frames, we close the lid and crank the hand-turner until the honey has spun out of the frames. The honey pours out of the pour spout at the bottom of the extractor into a food-safe bucket that we top with some filters to filter out any wax that spun off the frames.

We have used the manual honey extractor for the last 3 years, but this year we are upgrading to an electric extractor! We are excited to try it out and are grateful for the growth our company has seen in these last several years to allow us to upgrade our equipment, and to hopefully speed up the harvesting process so we can get the honey from the frames to you faster!