Four Ways to Harvest Honey without an Extractor

Last Wednesday I was part of a panel on ways to harvest honey. I talked about harvesting without an extractor. Below is the slideshow of slides I used for my part of this. Each type of harvest has been more extensively talked about on this blog previously and most can be found in the video/slideshow bar on the side.

Here are my slides illustrating four ways to harvest honey without an extractor:



Click on the slideshow to see captions for each picture.

I have detailed slide shows and videos on all of these ways on the sidebar on the right.

Crush and Strain Honey Harvest
Cut Comb Honey
Chunk Honey
Jar to Jar several links: one, two, three

Talk at Metro Atlanta Beekeepers' Association

Tonight I was part of a panel called "Everything Honey." Jerry Wallace and I were to talk about harvesting honey. We went together well since he uses an extractor and I do not. I talked about four honey harvest methods: Jar to Jar, Crush and Strain, Chunk Honey and Cut Comb Honey. Jerry talked about extracting and how different honeys come at different times of the year.



I had four slideshows - one on each topic above and I showed my video on Crush and Strain.
I'll try to post the slides in a single group later.

Results of honey hourglass experiment

The honey in my hourglass device took a full week to filter through to the jar below. Even at that there was still some honey remaining in the wax (more than usual in crush and strain). I added the wax to a large bucket of crush and strain from the same super to allow the rest of the honey to filter.

I don't know what the problem was in the slow speed. I put the jar outside in the heat; I used a cloth paint filter; I crushed the wax well. The web page says not to use cloth like cheese cloth to filter this, but a paint filter is designed to filter paint.

Next year I'll try to find mosquito netting as the web page originator suggested.

The honey hourglass begins to work

Here's Ella with her honey hourglass and you can see that the filtering has begun. Hers went through quickly.







And here's Gabe with his honey hourglass - don't be fooled by his apparently badly injured finger - it's actually just paper towel and duct tape - he wanted to experiment with the many uses of duct tape!


They are expecting the honey to filter all day tomorrow. I hope by the end of tomorrow they'll have full bottom jars of honey.

(Post script: Ella's filtered quickly and Gabe's did like mine - took quite a while to go through.)

Phase two of honey harvest helpers today

I found an Internet site with a suggestion for individual honey filtering.


We set up pairs of two pint jars. The first jar is empty and has paint filter covering the top. Then the brass ring is screwed on to hold the paint filter on the jar.
The second jar is filled with the crushed honey comb and honey. This one was quite sticky so we had to wipe the outside of the jar to clean it up. The brass ring was put on this jar without the top.


The empty jar is placed on top of the full jar, brass ring to brass ring, and the whole contraption is taped together with duct tape (another use for duct tape!). Then the pair of jars is turned so that the full jar is on top and the honey begins to filter into the jar below.


Gabe has just turned his jar over....we'll see how the honey flows.