How to Choose Honey Harvesting Equipment

You have your hives and bees. Now you need to retrieve the honey.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Electric Uncapping Knife
• Uncapping Bench And Tub
• Jars Or Plastic Honey Bear Containers
• Large Pan
• Punch
• Punch
• extractor - nonreversible, reversible or radial

Extracting Equipment

1. Estimate the number of supers to be harvested, both now and in the future.

2. Determine overhead costs vs. output of marketable honey.

3. Select electric or hand-turning extracting equipment.

4. Choose uncapping equipment. Purchase an uncapping tub and bench and an electric knife or plane for large harvests or a large pan found in the canning section and a punch or capping scratcher for smaller harvests.

Equipment to Prepare and Store Honey

5. Choose a honey-straining method. Strain from the extractor into a holding tank or straight from the extractor to jars.

6. Talk to people about the sizes of honey they would be interested in purchasing.

7. Look at the sizes of honey containers available at the grocery store.

8. Select jars or containers to store honey.

Tips & Warnings

• You can use the extractor as the holding tank and strain the honey straight into the jars to save on the cost of purchasing a holding tank.
• Most honey purchased by customers is in 1-lb. jars or smaller.