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Beekeeping Information

How do you get honey from the hive?


Early in July Kevin noticed that the frames in the honey super were nearly 90 percent full of capped honey comb. So, we decided to harvest the spring honey!


Honey Super: A wooden box containing frames for bee comb. The bees fill the comb in a honey super with honey.




"The happiness of the bee and the dolphin is to exist. For man it is to know that and to wonder at it." 

Jacques Yves Cousteau

Kevin opened the hives and pulled out the capped honey frames. Here is a picture of one of the frames. The glow is the light hitting the honey. You can also see wax covering the honey in the cells.

To get a better idea of where the bees store their honey, we’ll show you what the frame looks like after we take the honey out. You can see a whole bunch of small compartments, or cells, in this frame. That’s called honeycomb. The bees actually build that from scratch out of beeswax! After they build the honey comb, they fill each one of those cells with honey. They then seal each cell with more beeswax. This allows them to store the honey until they need it. Bees need honey to eat during the winter in order to survive. As you may know, Kevin went to Bee School, so he knows when to take honey from the hive, and he makes sure the bees still have plenty left to eat.

To get the honey out of the honey comb we use a machine called an extractor. An extractor is a large barrel with a wire rack on the inside that uses centrifugal force to get the honey out of the wax comb. There is also a valve at the bottom to allow the honey to flow into a bucket. Here is a picture of our old aluminum extractor and our new Stainless Steel extractor. Soon we will fill that bucket with honey!

Kevin cuts the caps off the honey. There is a special tool that does this, and it looks like a big fork. You can also use a knife or an electric knife. Kevin is using a knife here.

We keep the capped wax that we cut off. Eventually we’ll melt it over a double boiler to separate the wax. We will be able to make things like candles from the wax.

Now that the cap is cut off the comb we place the frames on the wire rack. Our extractor can fit up to nine frames, but large commercial extractors can fit more than a hundred frames at once. Now that the rack is loaded, it’s time for Kevin to work. This is an electric extractor which makes the wire rack on the inside spin round and round. The honey flies out of the frames, hits the side of the barrel, slides down to the bottom, and collects by the valve. Once Kevin has given it a good spin he opens the valve.

We strain the honey before it pours into the bucket. Yum!


The honey is very light in color. This is most likely due to the fact that we pulled it early in the season. The pollen the bees collected in the spring led to the lighter color. When we collect honey again in the fall it will most likely be darker from the late summer and fall pollen.
Using an extractor is not the only way to take the honey from the hive. You could also use  knife to cut the comb from the frame. Once the comb is free you can simply squeeze the honey out of the comb. Doing so damages the comb, though. The bees will have to start from scratch and make new comb for their next batch of honey. Using an extractor keeps the comb intact. Kevin actually puts the extracted comb back in the hive so the bees can clean it up and refill it with more honey. The squeeze method does save a beekeeper from needing much equipment, but having one saves the bees from having to use energy to make new comb.