Harvesting Aussie Jellybush Honey

well get a viewers and once again welcome back to Ozzy backyard food well I'm in need of a seriously big Ozzy backyard breakfast today because it's a big day it's my favorite day in the year it's when I get to harvest that liquid gold that as you know if you've watched any of my previous videos I treasure dearly and it wouldn't be an Aussie backyard breakfast if it wasn't for the fact that all of this homegrown goodness you see before you well as grown right here in my very own Ozzie backyard you see around here we don't talk in terms of food miles but more food meters everything you see before me was grown within a 50-meter radius of my back door and you might ask why the hell go to all that effort well the answer is simple it makes me feel good science is waking up to the nutritional importance of old-fashioned food that's what this is all about real food for real people and I feel like I'm leaving evidence of the benefits of real food on a real person yeah I'm no scientist but I know what I read and I know what a like and I know how I feel the contrast between supermarket food and real homegrown organic food it's becoming more and more stark never more so than in recent months you might recognize the squeeze packs and I'm not gonna go into brands I can't afford to be sued here we have a jar of my own homegrown home harvested honey backyard honey here we have a squeeze pack will you stop moving around recently it's and covered that much of the honey on our supermarket shelves here in Australia contains a significant proportion of liquid sugar syrup I don't know how you feel about that but it turns my stomach anyway thanks for staying still I've got breakfast to wait because I've got a big day in front of me let's review beautiful [Music] okay happy viewers welcome to my apiary well it's early May here in the Blue Mountains so that means the nights are getting quite cool this is gonna be my one and only extraction for this season which is unusual and that's because it's been a particularly rough season and not just difficult for me beekeepers around the state of New South Wales Australia where I live have reported record low honey harvests and when you're a beekeeper like me that doesn't feed their bees sugar syrup it's a noticeable impact I definitely could have done a harvest in the middle of summer because I know this box on a pond inspection was full but because of time constraints and family commitments I decided to put it off I'm gonna start on this old favorite ten frame paradise honeybee box without fail it's been my star performer over the years that I've had it in place and as I've mentioned before it's critical when you're beekeeping to be prepared well let's face it as in most areas of life it doesn't hurt to be a little bit organized so we've got our smoker well lit I've got my boxes ready to fill and put lids on and because I've got sixty thousand fairly determined these with fairly effective weapons I've got a bee suit as you know I don't always wear the bee suit but when I'm harvesting I think it's very important these of get-well are the power of TV come in and have a closer look there we go and the smell is pretty damn good this pays a nice of quite today I haven't spoken too soon yep beautiful now this is a frame that I inserted around about eight weeks ago because of the fact that this top box was completely full and I wanted this colony to get back to work because they'd knocked off basically so as you can see they haven't quite got this one full and capped off yet so I'm going to leave that on them and that'll serve to be he supply for them and we'll worry about harvesting that sometime next season here's another one of those newer frames which will stay to be the fresh nectar there all on a NICTA that'll stay so settle the enemy day alright now this is one of the frames that I stole from my 10 frame paradise honeybee box and it's just as it was when I pinched it so anyway we won't give these girls credit for this one and Syme again and again oh god that looks beautiful you know it's one of the advantages of being a beekeeper and not needing to worry about cured honey so I'm not putting this in storage I'm just putting it straight in the cake hole my god hmm that is a new flavor probably banks you what they're bringing a lot of in at the moment hmm what about cap there I'm gonna leave that one alone but just look at that the mouth is watering for long it's not dripping out Oh you know watch that foundationalist stuff as I just demonstrated it's not dripping out but you know what it's gonna leave this behind I just don't want to take the risk and a whole batch alright I wasn't actually going to show you this I've and what they've managed to create but just how different the color is in the comb in this colony I think we might be in for a bit of a liquid gold but the answer here look at that there you can see the bees have started emptying that out so I can take from that that what remains will be fully ripened honey and as you can see that that sides nicely kept Jesus look at the size of this one my goodness that might even be a record by my standards that is just so heavy look at the thickness of that frame people I split this colony around about 18 months ago and it's just going from strength to strength ever since awesome noise kept frames here oh that's heartening yep and they've emptied that side out and on their way to emptying that side out but it says good things there may be a couple honey frames that we can pinch from down below okay folks we're back in the lab as you can see not a huge harvest this year but that's the way it goes sometimes with anything that relies on the environment there's unpredictability it's good to know that I've got all my colonies through an extreme summer however and we've just got to roll with the punches as I stated previously I'm not going to be the type of beekeeper that start feeding these bees sugar that's just my call no judgment on those that choose to I just like to know that my honey is 100% sourced from my local environment so let's have a bit of a look through the equipment this year and for this extraction I've taken the suggestion of one of my loyal viewers Joshua rueland thanks mate I think he called it a twin bucket system so basically it's these two interlocking rectangular buckets the top one with inserted a mesh screen to catch and hold back all the cappings thereby allowing the honey to drip through into the second bucket which of course is our tap on it which will then write into our bucket with the strainer on top we've got our extractor and as I found with previous extractions this thing shakes around like a wild freakin bucking bronco I've screwed it down to a couple of nice big slabs of timber and just one more thing before we rip in in the interests of not wasting a single drop of our precious liquid gold which this year is even more precious they'll harvest wasn't a huge one I plan to use my honey soaked cappings to make a nice Mead so I have all my mead making equipment on standby and all the extra ingredients ready to go one of which is some frozen blackberries that I set aside from my summer blackberry harvest so it's gonna be a really exciting combination of local ingredients to see what sort of a blackberry flavored meat or mellow mill to be specific will come up with from that combo now folks you know I'm not against trying out new things so keep those suggestions rolling in speaking of rollin I'm gonna try a new uncapping method this time around it's a spiked roller style of an Kappa let's see how that works out I look at all that sticky goodness I see the challenge straightaway is going to be making sure that all of those single individual cells gets perforated a little bit fiddly but I think if there's an advantage in this method it'll be that the wax comb remains relatively undamaged love that sound and one other little tip I've found from previous experience it's good when using a centrifugal type of extractor to try and balance your frames out so if you're gonna have to light frames it's best to have them opposite each other to heavy frames once again have them opposite each other to try and minimize that rock and roll and that's inevitably going to be potentially a little too hard to handle for those less prepared beekeepers that is hmm and as you know if you've watched any of my other honey extraction episodes I wouldn't be an Aussie backyard food experience I'm not a full one without a bit of taste testing there's some beautiful flavors going on in that frame almost peppermint you know what guys I keep coming back to this thing the simplicity of it you just can't be and because of Joshua rule and suggestion the man that motivated me to build this twin bucket system I really don't think I'm gonna have a problem with cappings clogging up things it's just so so light so easy to move and maneuver you know the roller it's already clogged up so I've got to give the old uncapping roller or file I'm afraid here we have some more nice dark honey we came to give this one a taste test goddamn raisins it's time to give this honey wheel a world try a bit of olive oil lubricant to get rid of that squeak there you go another one of nature's miraculous products now wouldn't you think all those frames would be just about even by now and therefore not shake the hell over this extractor what I have found that because my apiary is situated within a whole bunch of Leptis berman or jelly bush is that sometimes often known in Australia here which the name gives away some of the characteristics of the honey is quite thick and viscous almost jelly like it makes it a little bit hard to get out of the frames and that perhaps could be what's going on what's causing an imbalance you might extract a right now let's have a look okay that's pretty empty that's still quite heavy yeah jellyboy honey aka manuka that's what the Chinese will pay hundreds of dollars a kilo for look at that jelly thickness of it no wonder I'm having trouble getting it out of the frames amazing but they say I'll give you superpowers I don't think I really stand a hope of getting the honey out of that it's just embedded in there that's gonna be the perfect use for my need in fact it'll probably entitle me to call it a manuka blackberry melly-mel Mead and and therefore well no I don't sell it sewing I don't really make any extra money out of it but it'll sound good for a lot of beekeepers Manuka or jelly bush is just pain in the ass such a strait between use for New Zealand beekeepers to turn such a negative into a positive making by the money of it there you go still pretty much as full as it was when I uncapped it okay this is finally a bit of a lifetime looking frame honey [Music] there we go I wonder I'm having trouble getting in there those frames for me thick bro fully sick look I'm not sure and I'm not gonna go to the expense and trouble of working out just what the active concentration of that Nucor element is but I'm spinning the out of these and just have a have a look it's it's just it's fair dinkum jelly honey get an eyeful of that my friends 100% organic sugar-free and straight from the bees to me well thanks you know you get 19 years when cup of tea time becomes a necessity you also know that you're getting on in the day when it's a cup of tea time before I rip into this frame I just wanted to make a bit of a deal out of it look at the beauty of that people that's probably the thickest frame my bees have ever put together and because of that I'm gonna take a bit of time and enjoy just carving the face off with a bread knife let's indulge [Music] [Applause] [Music] I'm glad for the fact that I'm going to be able to watch a lot of these cappings out and make use of the honey we're making some top-quality mood just look at how slow that is driving through that scene that's all I've managed to collect through that series same goes for this bucket check this frame now after multiple high speed spins through the extractor we've still got this thick syrupy honey stubbornly staying within the frames just look at how that stands proud of that knife there that's basically solid honey in a jelly form Joshua rule and you drool bro your twin bucket draining system just works a tree and it's come at the perfect time with this thick difficult to extract honey and the masses of cappings that I've got some from such a relatively small harvest it's the only way I'm gonna get the honey out of it bit of a crush and strain effort going on here and of course I'll be able to clean up a lot of that by washing it out and turning it into Mead so we've had our wax cappings draining overnight and bugger all's happen I've reached the conclusion that cool weather and jelly bush honey and real good combination so I've brought all my cappings indoors and I've lit the fire it's not not such a bad thing on a day like today anyway because it's quite cool so we'll see if that speeds the process up a little [Music] well viewers thus concludes another episode of Aussie backyard food and thus concludes another honey harvest it wasn't a big one as you can see probably only 25 kilos but as I get older I find out my focus turns more to quality over quantity and the quality of this liquid gold cannot be disputed it's a lovely dark full flavored honey this time around of course with a certain concentration of that magical ingredient we call manuka there was roughly five or six kilos of honey still remaining embedded within that wax that I was able to wash out and I'm hoping to turn into a lovely full-bodied full flavored blackberry spiced Mead that should go nicely in a couple of months when it's ready as we sit in front of the fire and reflect on summer's adventures and of course it's always good to be able to render down some of those cappings to turn into some wax which I've got no idea what I'm going to use for some candles perhaps a bit of face moisturizer could always do with a bit of that but once again I'd like to say big thank you to you my viewing audience for all your support all those insightful comments and questions it really is you that keeps me inspired and and pushes me on to new frontiers in my Ozzy backyard so jeez thanks again and I'll catch you next time right here in my please only not Mead lately I've been feeling the need it's got me worried and I don't know why excuse me why did I kiss this guy [Music] [Music] [Music]

Channel: Aussie Backyard Food

Views: 6,892

Keywords: manuka honey, honey bee, honeycomb, honey, beekeeping, beekeeper, beehive honey extraction, beehive, liquid gold, mead honey wine, backyard beekeeping, backyard food, grow your own food, organic food, aussie, health, nutrition, jelly bush honey, mead

Id: PDLVviJdmtg

Length: 28min 45sec (1725 seconds)

Published: Fri May 17 2019