Processing over 6,000 pounds of honey in less than 8 hours

hello mr. ed here today is June 20th 2020 up at the Abbey as you can tell and I mean June 20th a nectar flow has just ended and the bees are already on this pollen substitute I mean it's it's always amazing to me to find out when the bees start choosing to go after the substitute and I know there's still pollen out there but yet they're still going for this right now so I keep this stuff out here for them all year round this a really nice beater right here keeps a pile of substitute all dry so it stays on the back of the hunt portion all year long so what am i doing today well they will be the culmination of three very very very intense days of gathering our honey supers from the Box from the field with Tom Charlie and I we worked three days in the 90-degree temperatures lugging those 70 they're 100 100 pound boxes of honey because we run all deeps over here so that's all heavy boxes and we have got some of the most prettiest honey that I've ever gotten and not only is it the prettiest but this year we've actually pulled the most honey boxes last year I pulled about 60 or 65 boxes of honey this year 115 and that's still I still left probably 30 35 boxes out out of the field they weren't fully drawn out or fully capped or fully honey in them so we're just left in there because in October when I do my final harvest I'll bring those things in at that time but today we're gonna be doing the 115 that we've got and it's a process in here but what is the process that I use here daddy and it's it's a system that I've kind of developed over the years how things trial and they are how things work and how to get them to work easier for us and so what we do is when we bring in the honey supers we stack them on a little dolly that's got a tray underneath it and that trade will then catch any honey that's dripping out any wax that's coming later and we stack five boxes onto one of those dollars and the reason we stack five boxes on there is because when we do a run a runabout extractor extract is a 48 playing extractor so five boxes will make one run and one run of the extractor produces anywhere from 20 to 25 gallons and when we go inside I'm gonna show you that the process that we're gonna do and how we do it the machines that we use we run five boxes at a time that process takes about 15 minutes and 48 frames going through there and once they're finished with extract we load them up load up the next one run it through so by the grace of God but today I don't know who's coming today I know a good time Charlie had his wife become but this is probably going to be a half dozen other people coming we're gonna go ahead and and I'm gonna get in it before everybody shows up and give you a little rundown on the equipment that I that we're using here and a process of how we're doing it let's go inside and wrangle up some honey huh first let me show you all the honey supers that we pulled over the last three days it is an impressive stats for a little operation like ours and not only do I want to show you the box let's grab one of these flames out of here it's heavy but it looks like look at this it's beautiful beautiful capped honey beautiful stuff all right let's not show you the machines that we're gonna be using this is our uncapping machine this is a uncapping tank where all the honey and the cappings dripped into that from it on capitol Shane SR extractor right here and right there is our honey wax separator let me talk about the uncap are first there's basically two types of on cappers there's a knife on capper and a chain on capper and when I was deciding on which one I was gonna choose whether it be a knife or a chain on capper I decided to go with the chain and capper and this is what a chain on capital looks like on the inside you see the chains that are hanging from the top as well as from the bottom and what these chains do as the frames of honey are passing along the conveyor this conveyor from the from the inside feed into the out feed right here these chains are rolling across the frames of the honey and then as they roll across the frames of the honey it drags the cappings off and there are absolutely well also abs but almost hardly any misses at all in the frames there's very little scraping with the little tools very little that you have to do on that so the frames come out of our own capper we have a guy standing at this position and he will hand off the frame to somebody who is getting ready to load up the extractor and here's our extractor the 48 frame extractor and this is what one of the pieces I like about this one is the the bottom of the extractor it angles down and to the center whereas most extractors they angle from the center out they from the center out and so the honey runs from the center to the outside of the edge and it never drains out but with this extractor the honey runs down into the center and underneath it we have a motor with an auger on it that then just pumps or rather pushes our honey through the tube and into our drums and that's what we do is we just go right from our extractor to the drums and with all the wax cappings and everything in there and we just let it go in there because then probably about a week after we're just let it set and after about a week I'll come in and skim that stuff off as our friends are being uncapped by the on capper this tank is getting loaded with a lot of honey and wax happens we have to take the honey and Cap'n's from this tank and then bring it over to here so what we do is we have a big two-inch gate attached to the tank right here and a little to pan 3 pound bucket 3 gallon bucket and we take that bucket when we open up the gate and fill it up and we just bring it over here and dump it into our honey wax separator and this high rack separator simply another spinning drum and let me zoom in and you can see the perforated drum right then the wax will build up on the inside of that drum and the honey spins separates it goes right through it to the outside and then it will then drain at this point right here and the honey and that comes out of the tank right here will then be dumped into our drum right here so I think that's about the process of once everybody gets here we'll show you the process in motion we're going to crew here they're all they're all working I think we've got to eat the method down man we've only had one fall one two topples of my beehives but it's all getting ready to go we're getting ready to fire up this this whole sitting on Indian yeah well so you don't see it right now here it comes - that's prop [Applause] we got Patti she's the oven Randy Charlie goodtime charlie everybody knows that look at this Mike Barry world famous my Barry Scott and his white feathers right this so we're getting ready to started up we're waiting on Charlie now [Music] you [Music] well extractors all loaded up with 48 frames Preston's over there I'm finally getting all the ears in little slots in there this this extractor really is really nice that the the ears are the frames the ears right here sit in a whole base of the extractor and it makes the range sit tilt back against the back frame and it really holds those frames in here really well yeah so the extract is loaded up and you can see just from draining the bottom of the tank is full of funny so I'm going to turn on the pump and get that honey to pump out of here before we even start the extraction I'm glad to turn on the pump in you can see coming out of the nozzle [Music] I'm gonna draw them pretty much this in this Bazar we're gonna do this from because we're gonna set the next one up onto it and our bottom tank is empty so we can go ahead and start spinning this you're gonna move these drums right now world-famous Mike Geary that guy does everything good for the resume so I'll show you right now what we've already spun out of here we've got four these thirty gallons and two of these 55 already then I'll pull up but they're they're close enough for what we browned purposes I got the next drum set up and now we're going to turn on the extract [Music] my boy a place like that happens extractor fills up its be take a little while to get the balance and balance I'm already [Music] [Music] so I'll go ahead and reverse our rotation make sure we get all the honey out of this truck right yeah and that's what's nice another nice feature on this machine is turning to switch recovers around and every verses rotation so soon as it stops we're going to go ahead and take our frames out put them in our boxes and we separate our brood frames frames that had brutal and honey frames that way loss rule North issues and I won't ever go through the frames well a second time you do it right that beast the Queen it got in there late in there but he's ran her out and they get back filled at the punty and I'm taking those frames and we separate them out like I said those those frames of the food that's what the moths are elected to an integrative advantage large amounts of pollen portion so they get pulled out too because any kind of smell attract peat moss here's a really good example of one of these that that killed the 20 but it was Charlie hits all those that's it all right now we're gonna start this is Charlie's idea he said Jeff we need to run we need to run some water in here so we've been running the water the whole time I mean it's this is a mess all this light coming out and this is where I've dealt with right here honey I went down so we we keeping the floor nice and clean there's no nobody else has fallen so that's a great idea honey running the water running well we're running the honey good idea oh honey running with the water run good idea [Music] the wax separator right here turn this thing off [Music] [Applause] [Music] you [Music] we don't have bullets mine's about to die right you know so hey wait wait let me share it it is Magnus there what a day we started at 8 o'clock it's five o'clock right now we had two guys dropped out Heather and her husband Scott they just had to go home and feed the cat so they left rek-it ralf showed up and then he finished out the day so eight hours and what was our counted five hundred twenty gallon so as a body buddy good hard job believe that's all we got for this it is not a change [Music] as a lot of beans we get it bubbles me on here but you can see its tongue right here you can see its tongue you see it it's just licking the honey as visa this is the real beehive right here but these are all just 14 beans he all Akane these bosses they'll take this money they'll bring it back to their boxes that's an this is actually one of the like treats is this right here this is a big thing where most people are terrified of this

Channel: Jeff Horchoff Bees

Views: 534,862

Rating: 4.8450317 out of 5

Keywords: Processing over 6000 pounds of honey in less than 8 hours., honey, honey processing, bees, honey bees, uncapper machine, extractors, honey extractors, honey/ wax separator, drums of honey, honey boxes, feeding bees

Id: PluHRF-oMog

Length: 25min 56sec (1556 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 03 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Chrisw_2003]

It's insane to think that the honey bees are able to recognize their keepers and not attack them when they disturb the hive.

[u/wholeblackpeppercorn]

It is the product of one of the most intelligent and industrious of creatures, whose miniature society is one of the most sophisticated in the animal kingdom. It's been used in religious and Pagan celebrations, and it's medicinal qualities have been known for centuries.

[u/SXOSXO]

These bees are so docile they even let a random bumble bee chill out and sip honey?

[u/whitespacesucks]

THATS A LOTTA NUTS!

[u/2TrikPony]

That’s a lot of bees.