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How to harvest honey from your hive

A good honey harvest is ripe, surplus and clean. Unripe honey ferments. Honey taken from the brood box starves the colony. Honey handled in a dirty room full of bees is spoiled and unsafe to sell.

Is it ripe?

Take a frame when at least three-quarters to four-fifths of its cells are capped. For a part-capped frame, hold it flat over the box and give it a sharp shake. If nectar sprays out, it is not ready.

How much to leave

• Never take honey from the brood box. It is the colony's food.
• Take only the surplus from the supers, and only when the colony has enough stores for the dearth or winter ahead.
• A strong colony in a good year may give perhaps 15 to 30 kg of surplus. Many give less.

Clearing the bees from the supers

• Bee escape board: fit it under the super 24 to 48 hours before you harvest. Bees go down and cannot return. This disturbs the hive least.
• Shaking and brushing: shake each frame over the hive, brush off the rest and put the frame into a closed, empty box. Work fast.

Cover cleared supers at once so that robbing does not start, and take them straight to the extracting room. Extract within a day or two, before hive beetle and wax moth find them.

The extracting room

Honey is food, so the room must be:

• bee-tight, with closed or meshed windows and doors;
• clean, with washable surfaces, clean water, soap and a basin;
• equipped with food-grade stainless steel or plastic only;
• warm, at about 25 to 30 °C, so that the honey flows.

Wear clean clothes, cover your hair and wash your hands. Many small beekeepers prepare a kitchen for the day or share a club's honey room.

From comb to bucket

1. Uncap each face of the frame with a warm uncapping knife or a fork. Keep the cappings: they are the cleanest wax.
2. Extract. Load the frames so that the extractor is balanced. Spin slowly at first, because a full frame spun fast can break.
3. Strain through a coarse and then a fine food-grade mesh.
4. Settle the honey in a covered bucket for 24 to 48 hours, and skim off the foam.

Do not heat honey to make it flow. Anything above about 40 °C darkens it and spoils its flavour.

Check the moisture

Honey with too much water ferments. Ripe honey holds about 17 to 19% water. Test each batch with a refractometer, and keep honey that you store or sell below about 19%. Do not sell a batch that is too wet.

Storing

Store honey in airtight, food-grade containers, labelled with the date and the apiary. Keep it cool, dark and dry. Well-made honey keeps for years.

If it goes hard

All honey granulates eventually, and it is not spoiled. Warm the closed container gently in a water bath of no more than about 40 °C. Never use a stove or a microwave.

Top-bar hives

Cut whole capped combs off the bars, leaving a strip as a guide for the bees. Sell it as cut comb, or crush it and let it drain through a strainer.

Give the frames back

Return the wet, empty frames to the hives in the evening for the bees to clean. Do not leave them in the open to be robbed.

This guide is based on Chapter 10 of Beekeeping for Beginners, which also covers creamed honey and rendering beeswax safely.