Our bees have been hard at work, so much so that all of the frames in our hive were full. So this weekend was harvesting day. We pulled the honey from one super (a box of 10 frames) leaving 2 supers still on the hive.
a few frames waiting for harvesting
First we prop a frame up on a board and uncap it. They make special knives for this but we just use a big kitchen knife.
capped
uncapped
As soon as you cut off that wax, the honey will start oozing out. Of course, waiting for gravity would take forever. There are wax extractors but they are pretty costly, so we use a clean putty knife.
Once the honey has been removed, we take the frames back out and leave them near the hive. The bees will quickly clean up any remnants of honey and wax.
One super fills our stock pot with wax and honey. It will need to be strained and bottled, the wax cleaned and refined.
And what do you do with the containers that have traces of honey left in them after this process? We could just wash them but it's far tastier to make honey popcorn first. A batch of hot buttered popcorn swished around a sticky container makes for the best version of kettlecorn you'll ever eat.
