The process of extracting honey is interesting! Behind every jar of honey is a process that requires time and care. Follow us along extracting honey with pictures!
Supers are the shorter boxes placed on hives. Supers are meant to be filled with honey. When we gather our full supers, we shake, smoke, and brush as many bees as we can out of the box. These boxes can be heavy - each box can hold up to 30 pounds of honey!
After gathering all our supers, we prepare for extraction. The first step of extraction is loading the extracting machine with frames.
After loosening the frames with our hive tools, the frames start their journey on a conveyor belt that feeds them into our uncapper.
When honeycomb is full of honey, the bees cover the honey with a thin layer of wax to keep it safe. Our uncapping machine has scrapers that move back and forth to remove this wax and allow the honey to flow freely.
Each frame is checked along the conveyor belt to make sure they are all uncapped, and any broken frames can be removed immediately.
The frames are lined up at the end of the conveyor belt and are now ready to be loaded. Our machine is built to do many hives at one time, but there are smaller machines that do fewer.
The arms on the machine are controlled by one of our crew members who feeds the full frames into the machine, pushing the previously spun frames out. The hood of the extractor will be closed and the spinning will begin. As the machine spins the secured frames extremely quickly, centrifugal force is utilized as the honey is spun out of each frame. The honey flows to the bottom where a trough collects it to later be pumped to a large barrel.
The now empty frames are placed back into their boxes and will eventually top more hives to be filled with honey again.
After being pumped through a spinner that spins out any extra wax or large particles, the honey is ready to eat!
Our honey is then bottled and packaged! Ready to be sent to your door! Each step is done with great care and reverence for the bees that created this liquid gold. We pride ourselves in getting pure, unfiltered, raw honey from our hives to your homes. Shop Royal Honey!
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