A Month in the Apiary - September

Rather frustratingly, I’ve been laid up in bed following a car accident in that flash storm that followed the hot spell we had. A large puddle caught the land Rover causing the back end to slide out and over the edge it summersaulted downwards. Hopefully, the loss of feeling in my right arm is only temporary! It has meant that I’ll be unable to extract any honey from the hives this year, which is probably a good thing as they’ll keep all the stores for winter and, hopefully, I shan’t have the Pfaff of having to continually split the hives to create more colonies.

I did get a call from young Ben Pullan, who was hoping to extract honey from
some of his hives. As I was unable to use any of my equipment, he popped over
to mine to see what I had. He loaded the ten-frame electric extractor into the car
together with some sieves for the extracted honey and various buckets. His plan
was to use a warmed-up bread knife to cut the caps off the wax frames. I’ve found
this to be a messy and wasteful process, as well as time- consuming. I dug out my
hot air paint gun and gave it to him.

When extracting honey from the hive, the bees are driven downwards into the
brood box. Once empty the ‘supers’ that will have the honey removed are taken
off and taken to a pantry or similar. The frames are removed one by one, and the hot air gun swiftly passed over the face of the frame to melt the wax cap, on both sides of the frame. This is then loaded into the extractor, which is loaded with ten such frames, and then switched on. By centrifugal force, being thrown against the side of the extractor, the honey runs down into the well at the bottom and is extracted from the frame. Once there is sufficient, a tap on the side of the extractor is opened, the honey runs out and through two sieves (to remove any wax etc.) and into a honey bucket. When all the frames have been spun, they are returned to the ‘super’. This is then replaced in the colony for the bees to clean up and recover any honey residue.

Now the fun bit : from the sieved honey, a tap is opened, and the honey pours into a jar. Of course, the fun bit is the glass of wine I enjoy whilst doing this!

Nick Pendleton