Honey Harvesting and Processing

Betterbee carries a wide variety of honey processing, filtering, and bottling equipment for harvesting excess honey at the end of the season. Excess honey is a sign of a good year—enough rain to keep the flowers blooming, but not too much to keep the bees from flying. There are several methods to harvest honey, uncap frames, extract honey from the frames, filter the honey, and bottle it. In addition, you may want to process excess wax you've collected. Here’s a breakdown of the honey harvesting and processing process.

Harvest: There are three main tools for harvesting honey: a bee brush, an escape board, and a fume board. Use a bee brush to sweep the bees out of the way when harvesting honey. An escape board is a “door” you place on the hive—when the bees leave the honey super, they cannot find their way back, which clears all bees out in about 24 hours. A fume board is lined with a cloth inset where bee repellent is sprayed. The bees hate the smell of the repellent so they leave the honey super within minutes.

Uncap: "Uncapping means using a special tool to remove the thin beeswax covering off your honey frames to expose your honey. Minimizing damage to the frames when uncapping is important, as you can reuse the drawn comb to give your bees a head start on refilling the box. Cappings—the layer of wax that you scrape or cut off your honey frames—contain quite a bit of honey! Strain the honey from the cappings and add it to your harvest. Rinse the beeswax you strain out with water and save it in your refrigerator or freezer to melt into beeswax cakes later.

Extract: Using centrifugal force with a honey extractor is the fastest method of extracting honey if you have more than a few frames to harvest. Beekeeping clubs often have harvesting and extracting parties or an extracting kit you can borrow to extract your honey with minimal monetary investment. We carry a variety of honey extracting equipment for every budget, some of which can be upgraded later.

Filter: You’ll get more than just honey during uncapping and extracting: Beeswax, propolis, and even a couple of bee parts are typical—strain or filter them out. We use two-stage filters or cheesecloth over a larger gauged sieve. This honey filtering process still allows much of the pollen to pass through.

Bottle: Once your honey is strained, you're ready to bottle. The easiest way for the beginner to bottle is to use a plastic bucket with a gate at the bottom. Using gravity, you can easily fill the containers you wish to sell, give away, or keep. As your honey sales grow, consider buying equipment such as a bottling tank and an automatic filler.