the most amazing thing about spring
honey is the cappings are so light
if you can see that
you can almost
decap them
with just scraping them like that
you see how light that is and already
that there is enough to allow the honey
out
[Music]
[Music]
obviously this is my attempt at getting
a lot of honey
um
through the process
as quick as i can
i don't have a d capper
i don't have
the machines i used to use because that
wasn't my other workshop which i'm no
longer there now
but i do have my hands i do have my time
i do have a good decapping table
and i've got the space to do it in and
it's reasonably well organized
so what i do is i'm going to do this
flat
so you can see it
often i go along the top
first i used just a serrated knife for
this i know people are going to say oh
you should use a hot knife key capper i
haven't got time for that at the moment
i've never had to use it i won't use it
again in the future but for me this
works really well because it is serrated
okay
if this one's made by gero it's a
european make
it's okay it's not not bad
we clean off the top
clean off the bottom which is most
important because when you're putting
your supers back on on top of the
queen's club if that part there is full
of lumps of wax your frames don't go
down and you lose your b space
so really you're the wrong side to see
this so i'll put you on the
top of the extractor
if i can do it one hand holding the
other one
this is the what we call the
old-fashioned way
so the idea is you get your d-capping
knife under there
and what i'm doing is i'm actually
taking my time and decapping this as
close to the wax cappings as i can i
could go deep look like that
and i lose a lot of honey but the henny
i do get back because it comes out
underneath as you know because it drips
down there and comes out under here
but it's far better
for me
to do this a little bit slower
and get it really right because i'm only
taking the very top off
and if i do it like that
so i'm not
wasting the depth of wax and it's the
wax that the bees have built that when i
come to the summer harvest it's going to
save me honey
if you look at that look
you can see where i decapped hard and
where i decap shallow the extra few mil
makes a difference and that'll be extra
honey in my supers in the summer if we
have a good
summer harvest
obviously it's sticky
it takes a while
this isn't the quickest way and as i
said loads of people decided to me oh
you should get a decap in a different
decapping knife or have you tried this
have you tried that
it works for me i'm getting through it
i've got a few supers left but these are
beautiful supers
and at the end of the day
that does the job pretty well
okay
so that goes into the extractor here
i'm using this
konigan 32 frame extractor
it's perfectly fine
excuse me works pretty well
i don't have any issues with it
i'll i'll come to a few issues i've got
as we use it but there's nothing that
isn't
workable
it's just it is what it is
so
looking at these frames this was an
amazing colony well good queen
every single one is pretty much capped
all the way over
look at that okay we've got a few bees
but unfortunately
a few bees die that is beekeeping
i mean look at this it's just an amazing
colony
every single frame there must be
nearly 20
well about probably 16 kilos of honey
here
because the box is is as old and it's
light and the frames are plastic
as you saw
so i'll show you one here this is one
that has just been rebuilt from one of
the new ones
and you can kind of see
when i put this back on next time
this is the thickness i will build this
out to
if i can just move this one across
and try and show you
this is what i'm on about so
you can compare
you see how much more honey you get on
each frame
so you've got eight frames in this box
and then the other ones we've got ten
and the ten are only just built okay
they're all built now which is great so
next time i put that in i could put this
frame back in this box there because
they'll accept it
and they won't build in between it this
is what i'm on about
it's using your resources wisely
but when you see that you can see how
much more honey you get on each frame
absolutely beautiful frames
these are the kind of things that you
look back when you see photos later in
the year
and you're like wow
all that honey
i did all that work for that
and i sold it for what really seems to
be a pittance
and i think honey is worth
double what we get for it i honestly do
because i think it's such a delicious
project it's got such amazing properties
and yet we're competing against
people who import honey that isn't real
honey
and
also
they mix it up with a little bit of the
good stuff i know there's a lot of
people talk about it but when you see it
like this and you see the work you have
to do and obviously my work is going to
be streamlined later on
and it will be a little bit less work
and it'll be more efficient and quicker
i would have finished by now or i would
have had this in the warming room to go
off and do my other stuff
but
the thing is
the work that goes into extracting honey
real pure honey
and we're not allowed to call it pure or
raw
i believe but the real honey that people
extract is worth way more in real terms
as far as i'm concerned than anything
and if you can it's all about proving
the honey you've got and making sure
that you can prove that it's real and
then if you can prove it's real people
are happy to pay a good price for it and
i'm not talking about ridiculous price
i'm talking about a price that's worth
all the work you've put in
and that is the
problem it's proving that
so this is a good opportunity to show
you this this is what crystallization
looks like as it starts
so just decap this frame
this is from the end okay so i'm going
to put it too close because i'm going to
drip on the floor you see this corner
here that's crystallized honey
i'm just going to hold it so you can see
it anyway but
but the inside you can see there's a
little bit there it's actually a
different slightly lighter color that's
crystallized too
so we'll put this in the extractor
and we won't get it all out but what you
have to do is when it goes in the
extractor you've got to balance it okay
now you get some extractors that are
extremely well built
got really good support bars
and have bearings in that are more than
a capable of the job so no matter what
you put in
unbalanced
doesn't seem to send the thing walking
across the room
however this extractor is okay but if i
don't get the balance right it starts to
wobble and when things start to wobble
then they lose their
strength over time
and then they
become damaged
so what you want to avoid at all costs
is that starting
so you make sure that when you put one
in
that's crystallized will start and you
put another one opposite
so that you don't
create that
imbalance in the extractor
the other thing i wanted to talk about
was temperature when you're extracting
if you can bear it get your extraction
room to really warm
this room here you can see it's like a
conservatory it's got it's got panels on
the roof that actually are great because
they're insulated so you don't get
direct sunlight but this side lets heat
in and the windows obviously a lot of
heat comes in through the back and
radiates up around
so i reckon with the heater i've got
going that keeps it warm overnight to
about 15 18 degrees when the sun comes
out in the day you get a really good
warning and i reckon we'll be getting up
to 30 degrees now at the end of the
afternoon when you're extracting excuse
me chewing too much wax
at the end of the afternoon when you're
extracting
the honey becomes like liquid and it's
actually really easy and i wish
hindsight as usual i wish i got these
last
18 there done the other day when it was
really warm
but it's warm today i'll finish them
today it is what it is and maybe i
wouldn't have had that frame
crystallized i don't know but you know
sometimes there's only so much you can
do
so when you've got your
machine loaded just make sure you put
your frames opposites if you've got one
that's crystallized see these are all
good
the one i just put in was
well i don't know where it is now but
there's a couple here but i offset them
so you put one that side one the other
one that side one the other and you go
on doing that while you're balancing
your extractor and if you don't the
whole thing will move and rock around
the only ones i've seen that don't do
that there's
a company over here called carl fritz in
europe they make a
32 frame or 64 radial extractors
whatever you want but they are so strong
the internal settings and bars that they
just do not move
and obviously you've got it bolted to
the floor so
what i have to do is i start off at one
speed and just let it take its course
and when it's warm obviously all the
honey comes out really quickly if it's
really hot you may even
reverse some of that decrystallization
but then really you've got to just spend
the whole time drinking because it's
just literally like being in a sauna
it's so hot
so let's get this finished loaded
so basically this is belt driven
you can see the motor there
you probably see the belt underneath
and
it seems very reliable
so what i do is i start it off on a slow
speed
it's the moment we're between 10 and 20
i think that's rpm
you can hear as i increase it
you just hear that noise of the loose
wax flicking off
and hitting the sides
and then you start to see generally
the rush of honey coming through
the delivery nozzle
so the moment at the moment this at this
point all the frames are still full of
honey
so the machine might rock anyway because
don't forget you're gonna have some
areas that are gonna have heavier frames
in it's not until afterwards
when you spun out the loose honey that
the frames you put in that are
crystallized take over in the
in the weight distribution scenario and
if you balance them right because you
were looking at what you're extracting
then you generally won't have a problem
because you've got the balance about
riot
so the moment i know there's honey
spinning out pretty quick i can't lift
this up and show you
but down this side you'd see it flicking
out against the drum it comes down the
drum and then comes out the front
so we get a mix you get wax cappings and
honey coming out that front nozzle
okay then i can start to speed it up a
little bit more now
and we'll see how that goes just a
little bit more
i believe in giving things time honey's
got to find its own way and as i said
before
when you're extracting you've got to
look at
how how warm everything is if it's
really warm and the honey is really
flowing well then you can turn your
extractor up a bit quicker and get away
with it but you can't extract cold honey
you know you've got to
if it's if it's very thick and viscous
you've got to give it a little bit of
time to just make its way out it might
take longer to extract it that's one of
the rules of honey
so that's coming out pretty well now
the machine seems fairly well balanced
i've got a loose bolt there to sort out
i need to tighten that up there's always
going to be a few things i just took the
machine off the pallet and used it i
didn't have to do anything to it okay
i'm not very happy about this part here
because obviously what they've done is
they've heated it up and just bent it
but i don't know obviously this side is
supported because it's got a bracket on
it where the motor sits underneath
this side is the same
and so is the other leg
i've actually screwed the leg down to
the pallet i put the pad put it on top
of a pallet so i'd have more height so i
could actually get a bucket underneath
it so i could make things quicker for me
you see it's fairly stable now because
i've got that balance about right so i'm
going to speed it up a little bit more
it means that the honey that was going
to come out this loose has all left the
inside now and most of it's dripping
down the inside of the drum
so that's a fairly good result i'm
pretty happy with that at this stage if
i had it imbalanced it would already
start moving around
that's spinning pretty quickly now
and you can see there's no real movement
of the inner thread the inner spindle
it's pretty central it's not being
jerked around which is great so i'm
going to turn it up even more now
because it's warming up in there nicely
the sun's out now
to be honest if i left the machine on at
this speed
i know that the frames will eventually
be spun dry in another five or ten
minutes but what i do is i'll reverse it
the direction and then increase it
slightly more and i that's all i tend to
do this spring i haven't spent hours
hammering the motor hammering the frames
to get every single last drop out
because it doesn't matter you're never
going to get every single last drop out
you've got to just do what's best for
you
so you can see we're getting a little
bit of movement there now but not much
i'll increase it a little bit more
and that and i won't have to rebalance
this at all this is fairly well balanced
because to get to that speed
is enough for this extractor that's all
it needs to do
and so we're getting a little bit of
movement there now
but hardly much
that's acceptable to get to that speed
to be spinning like that i've already
got way too much honey in that bucket
that i'm going to have to lift up so i
close this off
wipe the excess off because there's
always a drip
i've got a spare bucket here that is
empty for the moment
as i'm going to get another barrel in
and i slide this one out
and put this one under
so there we go it just means i'm not
lifting
that's about 25 kilos in there i don't
want to lift any more than that up
because when you've lifted that all day
and you have to keep going i've got to
put a new barrel out here these are the
supports for the sieve i made and they
worked really well as you saw before and
we've got another barrel just here but
this barrel is only going to have
about another
25 maybe sorry another maybe 100 125 130
kilos in it because i've just got those
left to do but there'll be enough it'll
be fine to make it worthwhile
so i'm not ready to put in any pots yet
i'll just turn up a bit more but you can
see we've got a bit of movement there
now but that's going a fairly good lick
now
so i'm happy with that
okay so i'm going to slow this down
i'm using the motor to slow it down
because if you slow it down while it's
actually running
it has to slow down quicker than if i
just cut the stop button
so if i hit the stop button
you'll hear it now just keeps going
until it stops but it spins the other
way to counterbalance it i believe
then i can change the program because
that's spinning the other way
you go to the machine's finish by turn
it to program two
and press start
and that's the direction it's seen spins
in already
so now i can speed this up pretty
quickly because i know it's already spun
in the other way and that might just
help remove
any
honey that is
about to drip off but was stuck the
other side of the of that frame as it
spins out ragely
i'll just pause there for a minute if i
left that spinning there at that speed
that's more than enough to clean the
supers
and sometimes you'll see little flecks
of honey but if you can see that there
for example
little like traces that run across the
frames that's just as the honey left but
it's
it's thick and sticky i'll show you as
we undo the extractor afterwards i'll
show you the state of the frames
but we've got a good uh a good turn on
that one there's some nice frames in
there and the main thing is we haven't
had to spend time rebalancing it because
we did it at the start
so
so i've got some remaining supers there
that look really nice
left to extract there
look at that full
little bit less than that one but and
there's a few boxes of the top ones
actually that are brown the three there
the very top one has a white band around
it that was an attend i converted to an
eight one of the first supers i made but
the ones underneath the tens so i've got
a mix here but overall there's mostly
eights left so this would be i'm finding
that most of my eight
frames
that's eight in a ten frame box or eight
configuration are actually extracting
much better than the tens all the time
so we're just about done there now
i'll turn up for a few seconds a little
bit more
and to be honest that's all you really
need to do i mean the bees are going to
lick the rest clean
there's no point in going mad
and when i'll get that filtered in
another barrel i'll get a new barrel in
just temporarily it'll just completely
clog up all the places i've got no room
anyway all those are supers that are
extracted waiting to go that's my four
barrels there i've got one two three
here all waiting to go outside and i'll
turn the heating off this afternoon when
i'm finished that last few and then this
place can finally cool down
as all this has now gone
whiter than white
you can see here how it's already gone
solid or virtually solid
you never get that out through a nozzle
that's good
it's exactly normal
down
to sort that out after
see what you can do by quickly
you need to give that a wipe but you see
what i'm getting at anyway
it's all about
just
knowing how to process your honey this
is experience i've learned over time
about balancing its tractors about when
you've got to do the honey when it's
warm in the room
so we'll turn that right down press stop
and the machine will stop now
okay we're done now
and i'll just show you the soup as we
that we put in that were crystallized
and you can see how much we got out
but overall i can tell straight away
that most of that has come out and i'm
delighted because you know overall
pretty good so there's one
you can see
actually missed a tiny bit in that
corner because where i i think i dropped
the frame into the tank
it didn't quite get that so that bit
there isn't extracted but the bees will
will dig all that out and clean it out
you can see this frame is virtually
intact it's in good condition
all the honey's gone that's exactly what
i'm delighted about you see so the bees
get a little bit let's find one that was
that's clean and clear as well see look
totally spun out absolutely lovely
a few spots that side look there are
well that's pollen actually in there
but you always get a bit every now and
again but this year i've been extremely
lucky i don't know whether it's because
i just harvested at the right time
because i wrote my dates down on the
board
you see here the same
nice and clean
no sign of it that the frames are let me
just say they're a tiny bit sticky here
but i've got most of it off that's
enough
you know you can you can do pretty well
pretty quick you can just see
a few drops there
like a little bit of stickiness the far
end and the light there but that's fine
i can live with that
for what i'm doing
it's fine i think i got more out than i
thought you know
let's just try and find one of those
frames it was crystallized
and uh
here we go is that one nope
yes okay you can see here we can feel
the weight
okay so if you look at that one you can
see there's some
honey in there some little whites little
paler spots
that was actually less than i thought so
let's put that one in here straight away
out of the way
let's find one that is was heavy because
i had to balance the whole lot
and i know there was definitely one that
was pretty well crystallized
so look
that's one there there you go that's the
one there you see that we were decapping
at the start
so that's
but also i've got most of the middle out
you see and it was only on one end
so that side is actually not too bad
that's more pollen there
so
it just gives you some idea of what to
expect and
you know you've got to take this
beekeeping uh as on face value
you can't
worry about things like this you can't
get
emotional about oh my honey's extracted
you just deal with it and you move on
because if you don't you'll be forever
thinking is it worth is it worth it has
to be worth it otherwise you wouldn't be
doing it and this is the result we
wanted so i've got all that honey over
200 supers processed i've got those last
ones to do
and then i'm done for the spring which
is brilliant
so we are the end of the day and the
good news is
just have
this one
which isn't completely full but not bad
and one down there to do which is fairly
good as well
and there's already some i've got
already an extractor so this will be the
last turn i may have to do a couple
after if this doesn't fit and i've
worked out how many spaces i've got yet
but the good news is we are
one two three four five six seven
eighth barrel it won't be filled
but it's pretty full
it'll maybe get to three quarters but if
i say seven and a half barrels
because the little bit
extra that gives me over the seven and a
half will
make up to top up all of these that
technically aren't completely full
because it's very difficult to get them
right to the top because you'd obviously
gotta take it off after
now let's get this last few done get
them into the extractor
[Music]
so we have the last frame of 2022.
let's just give this side of
whiz over
2022 spring i should say
just not quite capped over that one
there we are
we are done
bit of an epic to get that all off but
it doesn't matter it's off it's in the
barrel
i've got one space left so i get an old
frame
and fill the space with the frame
or another frame from somewhere
to be honest this one will do here
see what happens when you have pollen
that gets dried
they don't like it and if the pollen
mites over the winter don't eat it all
up
they end up properlizing it and the bees
don't build anything honest you've got
to keep pollen out your super frames but
i can rebuild that
[Music]
that's what you've got to be careful of
if you're lifting heavy honey the bucket
gets slippery you need to lift it
somewhere like i did first that's higher
and then you can re-change your grip or
you get a honey pump which is what i'll
have
in my new extraction unit
i won't be doing this this is all
temporary
the biggest problem i have is walking
around with this in my hand
because it's so easy to go to the
extractor with it but you've got to just
put it down each time otherwise you drip
everything everywhere it's kind of one
of the ways you can
better open that again one of the ways
you can stop
drips and everything
is by
making sure that you
work to an exact
protocol that and that then helps
you keep everything
as tidy as possible and everything does
get sticky everything does get full of
it i get it on the door handle i get it
on my phone even though my phone this
year is nowhere near a barrel of honey
and it's actually in it's holder all the
time
but when you touch the screen you go and
touch the screen after and you've got to
wipe it with some wipes because it gets
full of honey which isn't a problem
because it's only the screen
what i'm saying is honey migrates
everywhere be prepared
do your extraction if you've got more
than a few supers to extract don't do it
in your kitchen do it somewhere away
like any garage or something if you can
get it warm enough
just think ahead
this is all temporary and next year i
will be in my own building
i have to be i can't do this two years
now it'll kill me but anyway
i hope you enjoyed that bit of info um i
love sharing all this
it's what i've learned over the last few
years and i know now how to make a mess
how to make less of a mess
because i've done it all the only thing
i haven't done is spill a big bucket of
honey anywhere yet or knocked over a
barrel and i'm sure that will happen one
day i'm just dreading it when it does
because it's so difficult to get back up
again you know but
anyway um i'm not going to be negative
on that note i hope you have a
good harvest this year and speak to you
soon take care bye for now
[Music]
you
