hand extraction

this is what i did to extract the honey. remember, i'm no expert, this is my first attempt at doing this and i most likely did it wrong but it worked. in the future, we hope to not butcher the comb. greg will be taking the foundations out of the frames to fix the errors so it didn't really matter this time around...

first, i took a knife and cut off the comb. you can see the honey pouring down the front of the comb. yum!


this is what it looked like in the pan. a pile of comb and lots of yummy honey.


before and after shot of the frames. the foundation has been scraped clean. i used a metal spatula to scrape them down gently after cutting off the comb.


next, i poured the honey into a funnel lined with a gerber baby diaper (they suck for diapering but are excellent in the kitchen!). the honey ran through and collected in the glass measuring bowl. the first frame i heated gently on the stove to melt the wax but the other 9, i did in this manner and it worked just as well.


i tried to not put the wax parts in the strainer. instead, i tossed those into a stock pot with a lid. it is now sitting outside in the sun. yesterday, we had no sun. hopefully it will cooperate more and melt the wax enough to separate the rest of the honey out.


in answer to the preserving question, since the combs weren't capped off, i'll be freezing the honey as a precaution. however, it won't last long because once the elderberries are ripe, i'll be making elderberry mead with it. yum!

so far, i've got about 2 gallons of honey, maybe a quart shy of that.