Читать книгу Honey For Dummies - Howland Blackiston - Страница 36

After collecting the frames of capped honeycomb (sans bees), beekeepers (large and small) follow the same process (illustrated in Figure 2-6) to get the honey out of the comb and bottle it. Only the scale of operations and size of equipment change. Here’s how the process works for both:

1 After removing the bees and bringing the honey supers into a workspace, the beekeeper removes each frame of capped honey from the supers.

2 A handheld knife or uncapping machine is used to slice off the wax cappings and expose the cells of ripened honey.This process is called uncapping.

3 An uncapping fork (or similar device) is used to get any cells missed by the knife or uncapping machine.

4 Once the frames are uncapped, they are placed in a centrifugal extractor.As the frames spin, the honey is forced out of the cells and dribbles down the walls of the extractor into a holding area.

5 The honey is drained from the extractor, filtered, put into airtight containers, and labeled.

Photography by Howland Blackiston (top) and www.cooknbeals.com (bottom)

FIGURE 2-6: These photos show the process for both a hobbyist beekeeper and a commercial operation. The steps are similar; only the scale of operations and size of equipment varies.