One of the most delicious things that mother nature has provided us with is the natural delicacy of honey. It can only be made by the talented busy bees, and mankind can’t touch that. We are always stealing honey from the bees after they have done all the hard work of making it. With that in mind, we had to come up with ways to protect ourselves as well as the bees when doing so. Naturally we would eventually conclude that we must make life a bit easier for the bees because they put money in our pockets as well as sweet stuff in our bellies. Here is 101 on extracting honey from our precious bees.
Doing it by hand the hard way
You can put on all your protective gear and pull out your honey comb frames making sure that the bees are smoked and calm. Take a knife and cut off the wax and scrape out the honey by hand. Some people may put the frames in a warm room and let the honey slowly drain out. If you choose to manually scrape out the honey, you will need to drain the honey from all of the wax that will be in the honey. This will cause the bees to work more to recreate the wax and start all over again.
Using an extractor
You do have the option of using a centrifugal extractor and letting the honey fly out with the spinning motion. The honey will collect at the bottom of the machine, which will consist of wax, bee parts, as well as honey, so it must be strained and filtered to get the best clear honey possible. One tool that you can use to help keep the comb intact is a roller with spikes that can be rolled over the wax to poke tiny holes in each cell. This will allow the bees to repair the holes instead of starting over. There will also be the job of cleaning everything up and placing the frames back into the hive.
There is a better way
Thankfully times have changed and new revelations have been discovered. Now there is a way to get your honey from the hive without hurting a single bee or making a mess. There is a new invention called the Flow Hive, which you can turn on a tap and the honey just flows out.
No matter how you decide to extract your honey, be kind to the bees and try to make things easier on them if you can. The makers of honey will appreciate all the love and help they can get. Every bee matters.
