We have honey!!!

So before Christmas we harvested our first lot of honey.

This is what Damian's hive looked like before we started the harvest.

We took a couple of the stores boxes off for harvesting.

This alien looking thing is the manual extractor.

We hired it from the Honey shop for the day.

Here Damian is putting a mesh/muslin sieve like thing over the top of the bucket where we are going to store our honey.

This odd looking thing is a hot knife.
You use it to remove the caps of the frames.

And here are our boxes ready for harvesting.
The thing on top is what we used to remove the bees from the boxes.
Basically you put this board between the part you want to take away, the bees can move through it but can not get back to the boxes you are taking away for harvesting.
Here Damian is using a pricking comb to open the caps so that the honey can be extracted.
The hot knife would do the same thing by removing the tops.

This is inside the extractor.

You place four frames inside it once you have removed the caps of the honey comb.

Then you turn the handle and spin.

You need two people one to hold the machine down while the other spins as it is a bit like a washing moving on spin cycle.

You do this four times changing the direction of the frames.

The momentum of the spinning sends the honey out.

And then the honey comes out the honey gate.

It is actually really fluid and comes out pretty quick.

You need the sieve to remove the wax that comes out with the honey.

Here is a before and after the one on the left is filled with honey and the one on the right is empty of honey.

Inside the extractor as we are harvesting the honey.

It basically is a lovely pool of honey at the bottom.

My attempt at an arty photo.

MMMM honey....

We pretty much filled this bucket.

MMMM honey....

MMMMM honey....

Damian and his first harvest of honey.

Happy head chef.

MMMM honey...

Label by Damian