Step 1:
First, you go get the bee boxes from the bee yard (the hive is in the box). Those slats of wood are called the frames. This is where the bees store their honey. They put it into individual little cells and then seal off the top of the cell with beeswax. A bee will only make 1/12 of a teaspoon of honey in its entire lifetime!
Step 2:
You take the frames out of the hive box and cut off the top layer of beeswax to expose the honey (not pictured) and then arrange them in a circle in this extractor tool (see picture). One hive of bees might have as many as 30 frames to extract honey from! Each one of these frames is cut by hand! Closing the lid, you turn the extractor on and it rotates quickly, causing the honey to propel out of the cells and against the extractor walls. The honey collects on the walls and drips down where it pools on the bottom.
Step 3:
After the honey pools in the bottom of the extractor tool, we then pour the honey directly from the extractor into a five gallon bucket. Once the five gallon bucket is full, we place the extracted honey into larger bulk tanks to "settle". The larger particles of wax settle to the top leaving (mostly) honey remaining in the bulk tanks. (There may be traces of wax, propolis, etc., in the honey). We do not filter any other way; the good stuff is left in our honey.
Step 4:
Once the honey is done "settling" in the bulk tanks, we place the honey in five gallon buckets or sometimes transfer it directly into our bottler. We do not have a fancy bottler machine like bigger honey packing operations; we use a small bottler that fills only one bottle at a time. And one bottle at a time is how we prefer it, because at the end of the day, it's just good honey from us to you.
