August Honey Extraction
Every year, August is our honey extraction time! Have you ever wondered how we extract our honey and how it gets from the hive to your kitchen? Here's a look inside our honey extraction process- a blend of nature’s magic and a little human know-how.
🐝 Step 1: The Bees Do the Hard Work
Before we even get involved, our bees are already busy at work! All spring and summer long, they've been collecting nectar from flowering plants and bring it back to the hive. There, they:
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Pass the nectar between worker bees to reduce its moisture content
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Store it in the honeycomb cells
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Fan it with their wings to evaporate more moisture
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Cap the cells with beeswax once the honey is ready
Fun fact: this sealed honey is can last indefinitely if left untouched!
🧹 Step 2: Removing the Honey Frames
In August, we remove frames from the hive to take back to the shop for extraction. We always ensure that we leave the bees plenty of honey for themselves to make it through the cold, harsh Vermont fall and winters. We take honey from the top hive boxes, called supers.
When the frames are at least 80% capped with wax, they’re ready to harvest. First, we
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Open the hive carefully to avoid disturbing the colony too much.
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Use a fume board to gently remove bees from the frames. Different beekeepers use different harmless but foul smelling substances on the fume boards so the bees crawl down away from the honey stores. That way we can take the honey out without taking too many bees with us in the process!
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Take out the full honey frames and bring them to the shop for extraction.
🔓 Step 3: Uncapping the Honeycomb
Back at the shop, we remove the wax caps that seal the honey in the comb.
Many beekeepers use:
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An uncapping knife (heated and serrated)
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Or a capping scratcher (like a tiny fork)
They use these tools to gently slice or scrape off the wax layer, exposing the honey-filled cells underneath. Given the scale of our operation, we use a comb decapping machine that uses metal chains to remove the outer layer of wax. It looks and functions a bit like a planer you might see in woodworking!
📝 Bonus: We save the removed wax (called “cappings”)! It gets melted down and reused in our beekeeping operation.
🍯 Step 4: Extracting the Honey
Now the real magic happens.
Our uncapped frames are placed into our honey extractor—a cylindrical machine that uses centrifugal force to spin the honey out of the comb. We have two massive, electric extractors that spin automatically. Many beekeepers with smaller operations use hand-cranked extractors as well!
As the frames spin, the honey flings out of the comb and drips down to the bottom of the extractor, collecting at the base.
🧼 Step 5: Filtering & Settling
The freshly extracted honey still contains small bits of wax, pollen, or propolis (a resin-like bee product).
For our raw honey, we put the honey through a light strainer to remove any dirt, debris, or big pieces of wax.
For our liquid honey, we heat this raw honey to denature any enzymes or proteins, making the honey a clear, liquid texture. We also filter it through a much higher strainer, so no pollen or microscopic beeswax bits remain.
🍯 Step 6: Bottling the Liquid Gold
Finally, our raw or liquid honey is poured into giant barrels and sealed, to be poured into the appropriate sized jars at a future date!
Honey extraction is part science, part art—and a whole lot of respect for our bees who make it possible. Next time you swirl some of our raw honey into your tea or drizzle it on yogurt, take a moment to appreciate the long journey it took to get there—from flower to bee to hive to jar.
