The spring and early summer honey flow ended weeks ago. We are in the startup of the fall honey flow now. I harvested this season's honey without an extractor. Here's how to do it. First, let's review.
The bees start with empty frames. I use plastic foundation coated with wax.
As the season goes on they build out the comb and fill it with honey. Then when the water content is around 18% they cap it off.
When all the frames are capped you are ready for harvesting. Using an extractor means scraping off the wax cappings and placing the frames in an extractor. It is about the same amount of work for the beekeeper either way, but scraping the entire comb off into a jar makes more work for the bees.
To read how to harvest using an extractor read this.
You just take a tool of your choosing (I use a metal spatula) and scrape the honey comb off into a container. If you want to filter it you can just add a filter to catch the comb. For this honey harvest I put large pieces of comb in the jar and then ladled honey in to fill the jar the rest of the way up. Here are some of my favorite pics from the process.
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You might have already guessed but I get pretty sticky during the process.
I have the best job ever. Well, the sweetest anyway.
