{"id":41,"date":"2018-07-27T21:48:00","date_gmt":"2018-07-27T21:48:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/roaringbees.com\/?p=41"},"modified":"2019-03-12T13:49:29","modified_gmt":"2019-03-12T13:49:29","slug":"honey-its-coming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/roaringbees.com\/?p=41","title":{"rendered":"Honey – its a-coming!"},"content":{"rendered":"
\nThe moment has arrived! We are honey producers.<\/div>\n
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\nIt seemed very complicated but actually if you follow the process it\u2019s not so bad. We had to get the frames from the hive, well that sounds easy. Lets not mention the tens of thousands of bees who are adamant that they do not want you to rob the honey they have spent so much time making. The advice we had was to \u2018brush the bees off the frame gently\u2019. Well, that\u2019s easier said than done to be honest. Once brushed off they don\u2019t pop off to the flowers and trees to get some more, they buzz around your head, batting into you and buzzing with fury. This is a task to do quickly!<\/div>\n
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\nHere are the frames we robbed from the bees<\/div>\n
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\nOnce we got them home, we had to scrap off the wax cappings that the bees had sealed the cells with to keep the honey fresh. This was with our new uncapping tool, which I have to say was a good choice  (and a cheap cheap bargain!!) and worked really well. It was an easy job which looked complicated and made me look like an expert, this I liked quite a lot.  To be fair Hubby could do it too, we both looked like experts that day. We revelled in it.<\/div>\n
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\nThis is the uncapping process<\/div>\n
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\nThen we have to check the water content with the spectrometer \u2013 this sounds scientific huh? Oh yes, how cool is this. Actually its really important as if we use honey that\u2019s got a water content that is too high it will ferment and turn black or look at bit dodgy. The water content has to be under 20%, all of our frames were around 15, 16 sometimes 17 or 18% so we could use it all. If you have a frame that is a bit higher once its extracted and mixed together it is likely to be ok. You would have to keep a close eye though if you were getting over 20%.<\/div>\n
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\nAfter this the honey can be extracted in the extractor. This is a barrel which you spin around by a handle after you have fixed the frames inside. One important things to remember \u2013 don\u2019t spin too hard as the frames collapse from excessive centrifugal force \u2013 this would have been useful to know beforehand. The honey is forced out on the outside wall of the barrel and then drips down in to the bottom. Eventually all your honey is off the frames and sitting ready to be filtered.<\/div>\n
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\nThe frames in the extractor<\/div>\n
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\nHubby extracting<\/div>\n
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\nThe set up<\/div>\n
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\nNext step is to open the honey gate, this is the tap which lets the honey run out of the extractor into your filter. You are not allowed to filter honey too much, if you do you have to sell it as filtered honey rather than just honey. The filter is really two sieves of different gauges that take out all the bits you don\u2019t really want to be eating \u2013 eggs, dead bees, wax, grass , pine needles \u2013 a whole bunch of stuff.<\/div>\n
\n<\/a> This is the filter with two separate gauge meshes<\/div>\n
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\nThis is the honey coming out of the gate after extraction, you can see the bits in it.<\/div>\n
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\n This is a bit later in the same process where the honey was running clearer<\/div>\n
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\nFinally the honey is resting in the honey settling tank, this is really a bucket with a honey gate on the bottom but because \u2018honey settling tank\u2019 sounds much more technical they cost \u00a320 each. We had various bits of advice about how long to leave the honey in here, some people said let the bubbles rise for 24 hours, others said it didn\u2019t matter one jot and do whatever you like.<\/div>\n
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\nSo imagine \u2013 your first go at producing honey, the jars are ready, the honey is sitting there, some people said it didn\u2019t matter if we waited for not \u2013 did we wait? Oh no, its taken months to get here, we are off filling asap.<\/div>\n
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\n<\/a> We got 18lbs of honey from one regular super. <\/div>\n
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\nThe honey! <\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The moment has arrived! We are honey producers. It seemed very complicated but actually if you follow the process it\u2019s not so bad. We had to get the frames from the hive, well that sounds easy. Lets not mention the tens of thousands of bees …<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":163,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/roaringbees.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/20180708_172856.jpg","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paMSCr-F","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/roaringbees.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/roaringbees.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/roaringbees.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/roaringbees.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/roaringbees.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=41"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/roaringbees.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":192,"href":"https:\/\/roaringbees.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41\/revisions\/192"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/roaringbees.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/163"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/roaringbees.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/roaringbees.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/roaringbees.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}