Old school honey extraction: some basic tips!!

the most amazing thing about spring honey is the cappings are so light if you can see that you can almost decap them with just scraping them like that you see how light that is and already that there is enough to allow the honey out [Music] [Music] obviously this is my attempt at getting a lot of honey um through the process as quick as i can i don't have a d capper i don't have the machines i used to use because that wasn't my other workshop which i'm no longer there now but i do have my hands i do have my time i do have a good decapping table and i've got the space to do it in and it's reasonably well organized so what i do is i'm going to do this flat so you can see it often i go along the top first i used just a serrated knife for this i know people are going to say oh you should use a hot knife key capper i haven't got time for that at the moment i've never had to use it i won't use it again in the future but for me this works really well because it is serrated okay if this one's made by gero it's a european make it's okay it's not not bad we clean off the top clean off the bottom which is most important because when you're putting your supers back on on top of the queen's club if that part there is full of lumps of wax your frames don't go down and you lose your b space so really you're the wrong side to see this so i'll put you on the top of the extractor if i can do it one hand holding the other one this is the what we call the old-fashioned way so the idea is you get your d-capping knife under there and what i'm doing is i'm actually taking my time and decapping this as close to the wax cappings as i can i could go deep look like that and i lose a lot of honey but the henny i do get back because it comes out underneath as you know because it drips down there and comes out under here but it's far better for me to do this a little bit slower and get it really right because i'm only taking the very top off and if i do it like that so i'm not wasting the depth of wax and it's the wax that the bees have built that when i come to the summer harvest it's going to save me honey if you look at that look you can see where i decapped hard and where i decap shallow the extra few mil makes a difference and that'll be extra honey in my supers in the summer if we have a good summer harvest obviously it's sticky it takes a while this isn't the quickest way and as i said loads of people decided to me oh you should get a decap in a different decapping knife or have you tried this have you tried that it works for me i'm getting through it i've got a few supers left but these are beautiful supers and at the end of the day that does the job pretty well okay so that goes into the extractor here i'm using this konigan 32 frame extractor it's perfectly fine excuse me works pretty well i don't have any issues with it i'll i'll come to a few issues i've got as we use it but there's nothing that isn't workable it's just it is what it is so looking at these frames this was an amazing colony well good queen every single one is pretty much capped all the way over look at that okay we've got a few bees but unfortunately a few bees die that is beekeeping i mean look at this it's just an amazing colony every single frame there must be nearly 20 well about probably 16 kilos of honey here because the box is is as old and it's light and the frames are plastic as you saw so i'll show you one here this is one that has just been rebuilt from one of the new ones and you can kind of see when i put this back on next time this is the thickness i will build this out to if i can just move this one across and try and show you this is what i'm on about so you can compare you see how much more honey you get on each frame so you've got eight frames in this box and then the other ones we've got ten and the ten are only just built okay they're all built now which is great so next time i put that in i could put this frame back in this box there because they'll accept it and they won't build in between it this is what i'm on about it's using your resources wisely but when you see that you can see how much more honey you get on each frame absolutely beautiful frames these are the kind of things that you look back when you see photos later in the year and you're like wow all that honey i did all that work for that and i sold it for what really seems to be a pittance and i think honey is worth double what we get for it i honestly do because i think it's such a delicious project it's got such amazing properties and yet we're competing against people who import honey that isn't real honey and also they mix it up with a little bit of the good stuff i know there's a lot of people talk about it but when you see it like this and you see the work you have to do and obviously my work is going to be streamlined later on and it will be a little bit less work and it'll be more efficient and quicker i would have finished by now or i would have had this in the warming room to go off and do my other stuff but the thing is the work that goes into extracting honey real pure honey and we're not allowed to call it pure or raw i believe but the real honey that people extract is worth way more in real terms as far as i'm concerned than anything and if you can it's all about proving the honey you've got and making sure that you can prove that it's real and then if you can prove it's real people are happy to pay a good price for it and i'm not talking about ridiculous price i'm talking about a price that's worth all the work you've put in and that is the problem it's proving that so this is a good opportunity to show you this this is what crystallization looks like as it starts so just decap this frame this is from the end okay so i'm going to put it too close because i'm going to drip on the floor you see this corner here that's crystallized honey i'm just going to hold it so you can see it anyway but but the inside you can see there's a little bit there it's actually a different slightly lighter color that's crystallized too so we'll put this in the extractor and we won't get it all out but what you have to do is when it goes in the extractor you've got to balance it okay now you get some extractors that are extremely well built got really good support bars and have bearings in that are more than a capable of the job so no matter what you put in unbalanced doesn't seem to send the thing walking across the room however this extractor is okay but if i don't get the balance right it starts to wobble and when things start to wobble then they lose their strength over time and then they become damaged so what you want to avoid at all costs is that starting so you make sure that when you put one in that's crystallized will start and you put another one opposite so that you don't create that imbalance in the extractor the other thing i wanted to talk about was temperature when you're extracting if you can bear it get your extraction room to really warm this room here you can see it's like a conservatory it's got it's got panels on the roof that actually are great because they're insulated so you don't get direct sunlight but this side lets heat in and the windows obviously a lot of heat comes in through the back and radiates up around so i reckon with the heater i've got going that keeps it warm overnight to about 15 18 degrees when the sun comes out in the day you get a really good warning and i reckon we'll be getting up to 30 degrees now at the end of the afternoon when you're extracting excuse me chewing too much wax at the end of the afternoon when you're extracting the honey becomes like liquid and it's actually really easy and i wish hindsight as usual i wish i got these last 18 there done the other day when it was really warm but it's warm today i'll finish them today it is what it is and maybe i wouldn't have had that frame crystallized i don't know but you know sometimes there's only so much you can do so when you've got your machine loaded just make sure you put your frames opposites if you've got one that's crystallized see these are all good the one i just put in was well i don't know where it is now but there's a couple here but i offset them so you put one that side one the other one that side one the other and you go on doing that while you're balancing your extractor and if you don't the whole thing will move and rock around the only ones i've seen that don't do that there's a company over here called carl fritz in europe they make a 32 frame or 64 radial extractors whatever you want but they are so strong the internal settings and bars that they just do not move and obviously you've got it bolted to the floor so what i have to do is i start off at one speed and just let it take its course and when it's warm obviously all the honey comes out really quickly if it's really hot you may even reverse some of that decrystallization but then really you've got to just spend the whole time drinking because it's just literally like being in a sauna it's so hot so let's get this finished loaded so basically this is belt driven you can see the motor there you probably see the belt underneath and it seems very reliable so what i do is i start it off on a slow speed it's the moment we're between 10 and 20 i think that's rpm you can hear as i increase it you just hear that noise of the loose wax flicking off and hitting the sides and then you start to see generally the rush of honey coming through the delivery nozzle so the moment at the moment this at this point all the frames are still full of honey so the machine might rock anyway because don't forget you're gonna have some areas that are gonna have heavier frames in it's not until afterwards when you spun out the loose honey that the frames you put in that are crystallized take over in the in the weight distribution scenario and if you balance them right because you were looking at what you're extracting then you generally won't have a problem because you've got the balance about riot so the moment i know there's honey spinning out pretty quick i can't lift this up and show you but down this side you'd see it flicking out against the drum it comes down the drum and then comes out the front so we get a mix you get wax cappings and honey coming out that front nozzle okay then i can start to speed it up a little bit more now and we'll see how that goes just a little bit more i believe in giving things time honey's got to find its own way and as i said before when you're extracting you've got to look at how how warm everything is if it's really warm and the honey is really flowing well then you can turn your extractor up a bit quicker and get away with it but you can't extract cold honey you know you've got to if it's if it's very thick and viscous you've got to give it a little bit of time to just make its way out it might take longer to extract it that's one of the rules of honey so that's coming out pretty well now the machine seems fairly well balanced i've got a loose bolt there to sort out i need to tighten that up there's always going to be a few things i just took the machine off the pallet and used it i didn't have to do anything to it okay i'm not very happy about this part here because obviously what they've done is they've heated it up and just bent it but i don't know obviously this side is supported because it's got a bracket on it where the motor sits underneath this side is the same and so is the other leg i've actually screwed the leg down to the pallet i put the pad put it on top of a pallet so i'd have more height so i could actually get a bucket underneath it so i could make things quicker for me you see it's fairly stable now because i've got that balance about right so i'm going to speed it up a little bit more it means that the honey that was going to come out this loose has all left the inside now and most of it's dripping down the inside of the drum so that's a fairly good result i'm pretty happy with that at this stage if i had it imbalanced it would already start moving around that's spinning pretty quickly now and you can see there's no real movement of the inner thread the inner spindle it's pretty central it's not being jerked around which is great so i'm going to turn it up even more now because it's warming up in there nicely the sun's out now to be honest if i left the machine on at this speed i know that the frames will eventually be spun dry in another five or ten minutes but what i do is i'll reverse it the direction and then increase it slightly more and i that's all i tend to do this spring i haven't spent hours hammering the motor hammering the frames to get every single last drop out because it doesn't matter you're never going to get every single last drop out you've got to just do what's best for you so you can see we're getting a little bit of movement there now but not much i'll increase it a little bit more and that and i won't have to rebalance this at all this is fairly well balanced because to get to that speed is enough for this extractor that's all it needs to do and so we're getting a little bit of movement there now but hardly much that's acceptable to get to that speed to be spinning like that i've already got way too much honey in that bucket that i'm going to have to lift up so i close this off wipe the excess off because there's always a drip i've got a spare bucket here that is empty for the moment as i'm going to get another barrel in and i slide this one out and put this one under so there we go it just means i'm not lifting that's about 25 kilos in there i don't want to lift any more than that up because when you've lifted that all day and you have to keep going i've got to put a new barrel out here these are the supports for the sieve i made and they worked really well as you saw before and we've got another barrel just here but this barrel is only going to have about another 25 maybe sorry another maybe 100 125 130 kilos in it because i've just got those left to do but there'll be enough it'll be fine to make it worthwhile so i'm not ready to put in any pots yet i'll just turn up a bit more but you can see we've got a bit of movement there now but that's going a fairly good lick now so i'm happy with that okay so i'm going to slow this down i'm using the motor to slow it down because if you slow it down while it's actually running it has to slow down quicker than if i just cut the stop button so if i hit the stop button you'll hear it now just keeps going until it stops but it spins the other way to counterbalance it i believe then i can change the program because that's spinning the other way you go to the machine's finish by turn it to program two and press start and that's the direction it's seen spins in already so now i can speed this up pretty quickly because i know it's already spun in the other way and that might just help remove any honey that is about to drip off but was stuck the other side of the of that frame as it spins out ragely i'll just pause there for a minute if i left that spinning there at that speed that's more than enough to clean the supers and sometimes you'll see little flecks of honey but if you can see that there for example little like traces that run across the frames that's just as the honey left but it's it's thick and sticky i'll show you as we undo the extractor afterwards i'll show you the state of the frames but we've got a good uh a good turn on that one there's some nice frames in there and the main thing is we haven't had to spend time rebalancing it because we did it at the start so so i've got some remaining supers there that look really nice left to extract there look at that full little bit less than that one but and there's a few boxes of the top ones actually that are brown the three there the very top one has a white band around it that was an attend i converted to an eight one of the first supers i made but the ones underneath the tens so i've got a mix here but overall there's mostly eights left so this would be i'm finding that most of my eight frames that's eight in a ten frame box or eight configuration are actually extracting much better than the tens all the time so we're just about done there now i'll turn up for a few seconds a little bit more and to be honest that's all you really need to do i mean the bees are going to lick the rest clean there's no point in going mad and when i'll get that filtered in another barrel i'll get a new barrel in just temporarily it'll just completely clog up all the places i've got no room anyway all those are supers that are extracted waiting to go that's my four barrels there i've got one two three here all waiting to go outside and i'll turn the heating off this afternoon when i'm finished that last few and then this place can finally cool down as all this has now gone whiter than white you can see here how it's already gone solid or virtually solid you never get that out through a nozzle that's good it's exactly normal down to sort that out after see what you can do by quickly you need to give that a wipe but you see what i'm getting at anyway it's all about just knowing how to process your honey this is experience i've learned over time about balancing its tractors about when you've got to do the honey when it's warm in the room so we'll turn that right down press stop and the machine will stop now okay we're done now and i'll just show you the soup as we that we put in that were crystallized and you can see how much we got out but overall i can tell straight away that most of that has come out and i'm delighted because you know overall pretty good so there's one you can see actually missed a tiny bit in that corner because where i i think i dropped the frame into the tank it didn't quite get that so that bit there isn't extracted but the bees will will dig all that out and clean it out you can see this frame is virtually intact it's in good condition all the honey's gone that's exactly what i'm delighted about you see so the bees get a little bit let's find one that was that's clean and clear as well see look totally spun out absolutely lovely a few spots that side look there are well that's pollen actually in there but you always get a bit every now and again but this year i've been extremely lucky i don't know whether it's because i just harvested at the right time because i wrote my dates down on the board you see here the same nice and clean no sign of it that the frames are let me just say they're a tiny bit sticky here but i've got most of it off that's enough you know you can you can do pretty well pretty quick you can just see a few drops there like a little bit of stickiness the far end and the light there but that's fine i can live with that for what i'm doing it's fine i think i got more out than i thought you know let's just try and find one of those frames it was crystallized and uh here we go is that one nope yes okay you can see here we can feel the weight okay so if you look at that one you can see there's some honey in there some little whites little paler spots that was actually less than i thought so let's put that one in here straight away out of the way let's find one that is was heavy because i had to balance the whole lot and i know there was definitely one that was pretty well crystallized so look that's one there there you go that's the one there you see that we were decapping at the start so that's but also i've got most of the middle out you see and it was only on one end so that side is actually not too bad that's more pollen there so it just gives you some idea of what to expect and you know you've got to take this beekeeping uh as on face value you can't worry about things like this you can't get emotional about oh my honey's extracted you just deal with it and you move on because if you don't you'll be forever thinking is it worth is it worth it has to be worth it otherwise you wouldn't be doing it and this is the result we wanted so i've got all that honey over 200 supers processed i've got those last ones to do and then i'm done for the spring which is brilliant so we are the end of the day and the good news is just have this one which isn't completely full but not bad and one down there to do which is fairly good as well and there's already some i've got already an extractor so this will be the last turn i may have to do a couple after if this doesn't fit and i've worked out how many spaces i've got yet but the good news is we are one two three four five six seven eighth barrel it won't be filled but it's pretty full it'll maybe get to three quarters but if i say seven and a half barrels because the little bit extra that gives me over the seven and a half will make up to top up all of these that technically aren't completely full because it's very difficult to get them right to the top because you'd obviously gotta take it off after now let's get this last few done get them into the extractor [Music] so we have the last frame of 2022. let's just give this side of whiz over 2022 spring i should say just not quite capped over that one there we are we are done bit of an epic to get that all off but it doesn't matter it's off it's in the barrel i've got one space left so i get an old frame and fill the space with the frame or another frame from somewhere to be honest this one will do here see what happens when you have pollen that gets dried they don't like it and if the pollen mites over the winter don't eat it all up they end up properlizing it and the bees don't build anything honest you've got to keep pollen out your super frames but i can rebuild that [Music] that's what you've got to be careful of if you're lifting heavy honey the bucket gets slippery you need to lift it somewhere like i did first that's higher and then you can re-change your grip or you get a honey pump which is what i'll have in my new extraction unit i won't be doing this this is all temporary the biggest problem i have is walking around with this in my hand because it's so easy to go to the extractor with it but you've got to just put it down each time otherwise you drip everything everywhere it's kind of one of the ways you can better open that again one of the ways you can stop drips and everything is by making sure that you work to an exact protocol that and that then helps you keep everything as tidy as possible and everything does get sticky everything does get full of it i get it on the door handle i get it on my phone even though my phone this year is nowhere near a barrel of honey and it's actually in it's holder all the time but when you touch the screen you go and touch the screen after and you've got to wipe it with some wipes because it gets full of honey which isn't a problem because it's only the screen what i'm saying is honey migrates everywhere be prepared do your extraction if you've got more than a few supers to extract don't do it in your kitchen do it somewhere away like any garage or something if you can get it warm enough just think ahead this is all temporary and next year i will be in my own building i have to be i can't do this two years now it'll kill me but anyway i hope you enjoyed that bit of info um i love sharing all this it's what i've learned over the last few years and i know now how to make a mess how to make less of a mess because i've done it all the only thing i haven't done is spill a big bucket of honey anywhere yet or knocked over a barrel and i'm sure that will happen one day i'm just dreading it when it does because it's so difficult to get back up again you know but anyway um i'm not going to be negative on that note i hope you have a good harvest this year and speak to you soon take care bye for now [Music] you

Channel: Richard Noel

Views: 100,614

Keywords: Richard Noel Bees, honey bees, bees in Brittany, extracting honey, Honey extraction, best beekeeper videos, beekeeping, Best youtube videos, Honey, Honey in Barels, Miel en Fût, extracting at home, extracting without a workshop, keep your honey house clean, Beekeeping in Brittany

Id: ptP967Vnb5w

Length: 29min 45sec (1785 seconds)

Published: Sat May 14 2022