Honey

Last time I looked, the bees had made four frames of mostly capped honey (two frames fully capped, two frames ¾ capped. So I bought some more frames and took the full ones out.

I thought I'd use the crush-and-strain method as described on Lisa and Robb's blog.I bought a double honey strainer from an ebay seller and put it over my biggest pot. It fits pretty well. Then I scraped the caps off the comb with a special scraping tool like a wide fork, and cut it out to fall (hopefully) in the strainer. Then I chopped it up a bit more and left it to drain.

When it stopped dripping through, I put the remaining comb into my second-biggest pot to be melted down and clarified. I did this for three of the four frames I'd taken out of the hive, but then the honey level reached the bottom of the sieve so I put the last frame away to extract later.

The honey from the three frames filled three large jars and four smaller (vegemite) jars, with a little left over. Not sure what to do with that.



Nice colour.

I spilled a bit. Hosed it down so it shouldn't encourage robbing by bees from other hives. I hope.

It took me all morning (and there's still honey in the pot, and that extra frame of comb). My hands are sticky with propolis. I hope the honey's good.