Harvesting honey
When you decide to harvest honey from a TBH have a clean container with a lid. remove the bar you wish to harvest and brush the bees back into the hive. I put the bar up aginst the side of the container and then lay the container on it's side. Working inside the container I cut the comb off the bar leaving 10 cm or so attached as a guid for the bees to rebuild from. Stand the container back up and lay the newly harvested comb on the bottom and you are ready for the next one. I find that cutting this way prevents the comb from ripping once you start cutting and preserves the look for cut comb honey.
For bottled honey you will have to devise a press your imigination is your only limit. For an example of a honey press see this link : http://www2.gsu.edu/~biojdsx/press.htm
To prevent a "honey bound" condition (i.e., not enough empty comb available as laying space for the queen), the brood portion of the hive can be supplied with additional bars, to allow the bees to construct new combs within the nest. This provides ample laying room for the queen and reduces congestion during the spring buildup. (as discussed on the previous pages)
Here is another method of "extracting" natural combs, once described by the late Mr. Allen Latham in his famous bee book:
Take a large container, such as a pail or drum, and droop strainer cloth (about the mesh of fly-screen or a little larger) across it, hanging down about halfway. Nylon mesh is a good material for this. Secure the cloth well with close pins, drawstring, tape or whatever, around the edge of the container, to ensure it will not sink down in any further.
Next construct a simple square wooden frame which will fit over and around the top of the container snugly. Staple or tack 1/2" mesh hardware cloth (metal screen) across this frame. Set the frame onto the pail or barrel, over the drooping strainer cloth.
Now..."extract!" Simply lay a large piece of honeycomb on the screen surface, and using a wooden paddle or other implement, mash the comb through the screen. This is easy and rapid. The crushed wax and honey falls down into the strainer cloth, and you proceed with several more combs until you have loaded up the strainer well. Cover it up and put it in a warm place, and over the next couple of days, almost all of the honey will drain through the wax and down past the strainer into the pail. It is remarkable how well the wax will "drip-dry" of honey this way, especially if the unit is kept warm. A number of the units can be made up very inexpensively to handle even a fairly large crop.
The unit can be set into a warmer made up of an insulated box or modified old refrigerator, with the heat provided by an appropriate arrangement of light-bulbs. Just don't let it get too warm! A temperature of about 100 degrees works out well.)
After pretty much all the honey has drained (2-3 days), lift the strainer cloth with its mass of wax out of the pail, and then treat the drained honey as you would any that came out of a centrifugal extractor. The cloth containing the wax can be tied and hung out near the bees, which will collect much of the residual honey through the material. Then the wax is ready for rinsing and melting into cakes.
This method is quick, neat, and reliable, as long as the honey is not unusually thick or granulated. (Not to mention--it's cheap!) The finished product will not look any different from honey taken from an extractor, and will retain its fine, fresh aroma and flavor.
The framed hardware cloth atop the container serves to rupture all the cells thoroughly as the comb is mashed, so that draining is very efficient.
Another way to support the mashed comb in the strainer for draining is as follows:
Cut a round piece of the same 1/2" mesh hardware cloth, the same diameter as the inside diameter of the pail about halfway down. Tack this round piece of metal screen to some wooden legs or a frame which, when placed down into the pail/barrel, will hold it about half way up off the bottom. Then you droop the strainer cloth down in over it as described above. The round piece of screen will thereby act as a sort of "table", inside the pail, supporting the weight of the wax/honey mash, and letting the honey pass through.
Note: Some of your harvested combs are bound to be of very high quality particularly attractive, and they can be cut to fit into cut-comb honey containers. The leftover scraps can then be processed into liquid honey as described above.
As with any extracted honey, a froth of air bubbles and wax particles will rise to the surface of the honey over the ensuing days or weeks. This is skimmed off prior to warming and/or straining a second time through fine mesh such as nylons. The honey can then be bottled as desired. The froth skimmed from the honey can be recycled and not wasted, by feeding it, undiluted back to your bees!
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