Hey everyone, firstly a very HAPPY NEW YEAR to you all, lets hold thumbs that this is the very best, I believe it will be.
This was a very epic bitter sweet day, and by bitter sweet I mean SWEET SWEET, it is honey after all what is not to love?
A week odd ago myself and my landlord and decided it was time to harvest some honey. It has been a long dry dearth season and it has started very late, however we had some incredible rain recently and generally after the rain, results in some amazing honey flow. This time around was no different, we were very impressed with our harvest this time around a whopping 15kgs odd from only 4 hives and 13 Super Frames!
We work bees at night only. The African Killer Bee, which ours are, are very dangerous and aggressive. Working bees at night is literally an insurance policy as they can't see. Harvesting or Robbing from them always aggravates them, however if done in the dark very safe and by the time the morning comes they are calm and carry on as usual!
After harvesting from the hives we put the super frames laden with honey in the below tub. We then uncap the honey combs and put in our centrifugal spinner to be extracted!
I use an uncapping fork to remove the caps from the combs before spinning, failure to do so would naturally result in honey not been able to be extracted. Some folks use a knife, I find the fork to be much more effective and convenient!
What would a post be without my little faithful shadow/supporter Tinkie, keeping me company and naturally always approving of all work rendered, tail feverishly wagging as usual, she is so loyal and precious!
Below pic the honey is flowing with all the debris from the centrifugal honey extractor to the settling tank via the 2 step sieve!
Once the spinner has extracted the honey we gravity feed into another settling tank covered by a sieve to remove larger wax particles, un-cappings and debris! Here the honey recently fed into the sieve now draining into the stainless steel settling tank below!
All done and dusted here we have the final product in the settling tank ready to be bottled of weighed off and sold per kg to our regular clients that bring their own buckets and collect!
That white debris on the top is wax particles, honey really does not get more pure or raw than this, non irradiated, not heated, no added sugar, syrup etc. TRUE REAL RAW HONEY!
Nature truly is incredible and nothing beats harvesting this sweet super food from your very own hives as we do.
Trust you have an incredible year ahead.
Cheer$;)