Honey extraction, comb honey, chunk honey

Over the weekend we used a borrowed honey extractor to get the honey out of a couple of hive frames, plus cut six frames into 24 boxes of comb honey, and one frame into 8 jars of chunk honey.

Here are the frames in the baskets of the honey extractor; it’s basically a centrifuge, where the frames are spun quickly to force the honey out of the wax cells:

A look at the outside of the extractor; it has a crank handle to spin the baskets, a top chamber with the baskets, and a bottom chamber where the honey is collected:

This is a comb honey cutter, which cuts a square of the comb, which is then placed in the plastic boxes:

A hive box, and stacks of comb honey:

The extracted honey was then poured into a bucket with a fine mesh at the top, to filter out the globs of wax (the Flow hive is much easier!):

Here’s a view from inside of it flowing out:

We put the extractor outside so the rain could clean it… and a few bees turned up to help:

Then they told their sisters, and a large swarm of bees turned up:

They did a good job of cleaning it, though!

Meanwhile, Jenn cut the comb from another frame into half-sized portions, put them in jars, and poured filtered honey in to make chunk honey:

Here are a couple of jars of chunk honey:

The packaged comb and chunk honey (we’ll add labels later):