Before diving into the process of harvesting honey, it’s important to understand the basic design of the hives! The hives consist of stacked bees boxes, the number of which is determined by your bee population. Within these boxes there are honey frames, which slide into the boxes vertically. These frames hold the honeycomb (aka bee wax!), which of course holds the honey. Once a honeycomb slot is filled with honey, the bees put a “cap” on it, creating a natural storage unit.

Harvesting honey begins with removing the honey-filled frames from the hives. First, we evacuate the bees by forcing smoke into the hives with a bee smoker, making them assume the hive is on fire. Then we transfer the frames into an empty bee box, gently removing all remaining bees with a bee brush. After all of the frames are into bee-free boxes, we take them to the barn to start extracting the honey!

Once in the barn, we start to remove the caps from the honeycomb in order to access the honey within. We use a long serrated knife and gently slide down the edge of the frame. To make this process as efficient and clean as possible, we prop the frame over a large bin, which catches the discarded comb and honey. This is my favorite part because it comes with a built-in snack of warm and fresh honey 😉

Next, we put the de-capped honey frames into the spinning machine (for lack of better name…) which extracts the honey! This machine was designed to harvest the honey without ruining the honeycomb, saving the bees much energy and time. It holds four frames at a time and spins them so fast that the honey shoots out of the honeycomb and onto the walls, proceeding to funnel out the drain. The drain pours right into a sieve, which catches any debris. Finally the honey drips into five gallon buckets. Lastly, we bottle about 3 gallons of honey and store the rest in 5 gallon buckets.

I hope you’ve enjoyed learning about harvesting honey! Please feel free to ask any questions in the comments below.