How to extract honey: an extractor or crush and strain, step by step

Extracting honey is the day the season pays out, and it goes more smoothly than its reputation suggests. Most of the work is in the preparation: a warm room, clean equipment and the frames coming in free of bees. After that it is a sequence, uncap, spin or crush, strain, settle and bottle, that you will have memorised by the second super. Here is each step, with the choices that depend on how many hives you keep.

What you need

• An uncapping tool: an uncapping fork, a serrated or heated knife, and a tray or tub to catch the cappings.
• An extractor, borrowed, rented or bought, or for crush and strain, a food-grade bucket and a potato masher.
• A double strainer, coarse over fine, that sits across the top of a bucket.
• A settling bucket or tank with a honey gate, the tap at the bottom that fills jars.
• Clean, dry jars, lids and labels, and a clean room with a floor that can be mopped, because honey gets everywhere.

1. Bring the frames in warm and free of bees

Clear the supers of bees with clearer boards or a fume board and bring them indoors promptly. Extract within a day or two: stored honey supers attract wax moth, and in regions that have it, small hive beetle. Work in a warm room, around 25 to 30°C, 77 to 86°F, because warm honey flows out of the comb far more easily than cold honey, but keep the honey itself below about 40°C, 104°F. Heating honey more than that damages its flavour and enzymes.

2. Uncap the frames

Hold each frame upright over the uncapping tray, tilted slightly so the cappings fall away, and slice or lift off the wax cappings from both sides, as close to the surface as you can. An uncapping fork is easier for a beginner and for uneven comb; a heated knife is faster once you have the feel. Keep the cappings: they hold a surprising amount of honey, which drains out over a day or two, and the wax that is left is the cleanest wax the hive produces.

3. Spin the honey out

A tangential extractor holds frames flat against the drum wall and empties the outward-facing side. Spin gently to take half the honey out of the first side, turn the frames, empty the second side fully, then turn back and finish the first; starting too fast with full frames can break the comb. A radial extractor holds frames like spokes and empties both sides at once, which is quicker with more than a few frames. With either kind, load frames of similar weight opposite each other so the drum does not wobble across the floor, and build up speed slowly.

Or crush and strain

With a hive or two, or frames with no foundation, crushing and straining needs no extractor at all. Cut the comb from the frames into a food-grade bucket, crush it thoroughly, and pour it into a strainer or a fine mesh bag over a second bucket. Leave it covered in a warm room for a day or more to drain. It is simple and cheap, but it costs the comb, and bees use a lot of nectar to build new wax, so the next harvest from those frames will be smaller.

4. Strain and settle

Run the honey through the double strainer, coarse mesh on top to catch wax and bits of bee, fine mesh below. Then let it stand in the settling bucket for one to two days, covered, at room temperature. Air bubbles and fine particles of wax rise to the top and can be skimmed off, and the honey that comes out of the gate is clear.

5. Bottle and label

Fill clean, completely dry jars from the honey gate, leaving a small gap under the lid, and close them straight away, because honey absorbs moisture from the air. Label them before they go anywhere. If you sell honey, the label usually has to meet food rules, which the beekeeping business guide summarises.

6. Clean up

Give the wet, extracted supers back to the bees to clean, placed on the hives in the evening so the smell does not start robbing, and take them off again a couple of days later. Wash the extractor, strainers and buckets with warm water rather than hot, which melts wax onto everything. Store the dry supers somewhere cool, sealed against wax moth, or freeze the frames for a couple of days first. Let the cappings drain, then melt the wax for candles, polish, or to trade for foundation.

Record what came out

Write down the weight of honey from each hive or each apiary before it goes into the settling bucket, where the batches mix. That number is the one that shows which colonies to breed from and which sites to keep, and it is where deciding when to harvest and weighing the harvest per hive pay off. The harvest records in BeehiveMind take honey, pollen, royal jelly and propolis, per hive or per apiary.