Daffy Duck and the Golden Goodness

I have to admit I felt a little like Daffy Duck the other day when he said, "It's mine, you understand? Mine! All mine!" You may or may not recall the famous cartoon called ALI BABA so I will post it if you need a refresher...







Here is The Queen uncapper doing her best. You have to watch those fingers and hold the knife just right. After the bees fill the cells with honey they cap the cells with a thin layer of wax called capping's. These capping's need to be removed before extraction. Both sides of each frame are uncapped with a hot knife and then added to the extractor while we continue to control our saliva glands.





The frames are added to the extractor and then the spinning begins. My arm actually started to hurt so eventually we are going to want a larger extractor. I think a 6 frame extractor would be quite nice.





We had a small glass brownie dish to catch all of the capping's. Here you can see a beautiful frame of fresh honey ready to extracted. Things tend to get quite sticky around harvest day. But it is all worth it!





Here is the honey team. (not pictured was my main assistant who took the photos) Working together really saved time. When extracting you want your "honey house" to be hot so the honey runs out of the frames better. My son was quite hot so he removed his shirt while he was assisting us. He would hold the frames while they waited to be extracted.





I wanted to throw this picture in because it gives you an idea of just how heavy the frames are. Mr. Frame Holder here is making a face because he was plum tuckered out of holding and balancing the frames before they were placed in the extractor. I just love his worried expression. He was so tired and was worried that he would drop one of the frames and ruin them.





Aromatic waves of fresh honey fill the room while our work continues. Just seeing the honey run from the extractor into the filter made me drool. You can see the honey running from the extractor into the filter here. The honey is then stored in a 5 gallon bucket.


It was good hard work but well worth the payoff! The bees worked hard to collect all of this honey and we should be grateful for their efforts. Out of the one super we collected 2.5 gallons. We probably have 3-4 more supers to go but they are not all the same size so I will keep a running total for our 2010 season.