How to Harvest Honey Without an Extractor

A beekeeper with only a few hives can have a delicious harvest with good results and without using an extractor. Here is an easy way to harvest your honey by hand. The advantages are that no heat is applied to the honey and that the honey is not slung through the air as it is in an extractor.

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Frames of honey from a beehive
• A sharp knife
• A rubber spatula
• A crushing device like a pestle
• A large pan with deep sides
• A silicone cutting mat
• A set of honey filters
• A deep bucket with a honey gate
• Clean jars and lids

1. Set the three straining filters into the top of the large bucket. The filters should be in order of coarse on the top to finest on the bottom, closest to the bottom of the bucket.

2. Put the silicone mat in the bottom of the deep sided pan.

3. 
    
   cutting honey off of the frame

   Holding the frame vertically in the pan, using the sharp knife, cut the honeycomb off of the frame. The comb will fall onto the silicone mat in the pan below.

4. 
    
   Crushing the honey with a pestle

   Using the pestle, crush the honeycomb into small pieces

5. 
    
   Sliding the crushed comb off of the silicone mat into the straining bucket

   When the honeycomb is all crushed, lift the silicone mat and pour the crushed honeycomb into the straining bucket.

6. When you have cut off and crushed all the comb from one super, put the top on the straining bucket and put it outside in the warm air to encourage a speedy filtering process.

7. 
    
   A finished jar of honey

   Bring the honey bucket inside and bottle the honey. To bottle the honey, hold each individual jar under the honey gate, open the gate, fill the bottle and put on its top.

Tips & Warnings

• Put cardboard on the kitchen floor and on the counters under the pan and honey bucket. This helps with clean-up later
• Return the frames to the hives for the bees to clean up
• Sharp knives and children don't mix!
• Once you've harvested this way, you'll never want to use an extractor - the clean-up is so easy.

[respectfully]

on 9/9/2009 I love honey, but bees scary. great article 5*recmnd