Sept. 17, 2026
Small-Scale Honey Extraction with Anne Frey (301)
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RSS Feed Honey extraction can be rewarding, but for a small operation it can also be sticky, awkward, and surprisingly hard on the wrists. In this episode of Honey Bee Obscura, Jim Tew and Anne Frey compare practical ways to get a modest honey crop from the comb without pretending there is one perfect setup.
Jim traces his own path from a two-frame extractor to larger equipment at Ohio State and, decades later, back to a small extractor for seven or eight colonies. Anne suggests that beginners first borrow an extractor and other processing equipment from a local beekeeping club, while Jim makes the case for keeping durable stainless-steel tools that may become useful again as an operation changes.
They examine uncapping options ranging from cold and heated knives to uncapping planes, scratchers, and rollers. Anne explains why a pulling motion can be easier on the wrist and what happens to wax fragments after pierced cappings release their honey. The conversation also covers settling and straining honey, saving cappings, and the tradeoffs of crush-and-strain processing.
Small extractors bring another challenge: vibration. Jim and Anne swap inventive approaches involving floor anchors, plywood bases, added weight, wheeled stands, and even a spring-mounted utility trailer. They also discuss running multiple small extractors instead of immediately buying a larger machine.
Their conclusion is simple: match the equipment to the size of the operation, stay open to changing the process, and keep every surface and tool clean.
______________________
Thanks to Betterbee for sponsoring today's episode. Betterbee’s mission is to support every beekeeper with excellent customer service, continued education and quality equipment. From their colorful and informative catalog to their support of beekeeper educational activities, including this podcast series, Betterbee truly is Beekeepers Serving Beekeepers. See for yourself at www.betterbee.com
We’d like to thank Vita Bee Health for supporting the podcast. Vita provides proven tools for controlling Varroa—from Apistan and Apiguard to the new VarroxSan extended-release oxalic acid strips—helping beekeepers keep stronger, healthier colonies.
Thanks to Bee Culture, the Magazine of American Beekeeping, for their support of Honey Bee Obscura. Available in print and digital at www.beeculture.com
______________________
Honey Bee Obscura is brought to you by Growing Planet Media, LLC, the home of Beekeeping Today Podcast.
Music: Heart & Soul by Gyom, All We Know by Midway Music; Christmas Avenue by Immersive Music; original guitar music by Jeffrey Ott
Cartoons by: John Martin (Beezwax Comics)
Copyright © 2026 by Growing Planet Media, LLC
WEBVTT
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Hey listeners, it's Jim here again this week.
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I've got a fairly routine special guest.
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Even though she's routine, she's still special.
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Say hi
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and
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Hi, it's Anne Frey
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with Jim today.
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She's from Betterbee,
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Bee, people who provide bee supplies to the world.
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Anne and I were talking about this time of the year when we extract honey
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What do you do if you're a smaller producer,
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even a larger one?
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What are the options available for uncapping and straining and whatever?
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It's an old topic, but it's always a messy topic.
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And
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I'd like for you and me to discuss it.
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Sounds good.
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I like this topic.
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Honey Bee Obscura listeners, I'm Jim Tew
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and I come to you here once a week at Honey
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Bee Obscura.
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Today
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Anne and I will try to talk about something you do
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with plain
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talk beekeeping.
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Welcome to Honey Bee Obscura, brought to you by Growing Planet Media, the producers of the Beekeeping Today
00:01:01.260 --> 00:01:02.860
podcast.
00:01:02.860 --> 00:01:07.580
Join Jim Tew, your guide through the complexities, the beauty, the
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fun and the challenges of managing honey bees.
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Jim hosts fun and interesting guests who take a deep dive into the intricate world of honey bees.
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Whether you're a seasoned beekeeper or just getting started, get ready for
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some plain talk that'll delve into all things honey bees.
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Extracting honey is like me trying to make biscuits.
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The only place I don't have flour in my house is down on the mailbox down by the road.
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It's just the biggest mess, and I try not to splash it to make a mess, but I just get flour everywhere.
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When I try to extract honey, why does it always end up being kind of a
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kind of an exciting, sticky, tasty, sweet job.
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It's just one of those things that's not really beekeeping, but it's certainly an aspect of beekeeping.
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I
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used to have a friend, he
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passed away
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now, he used to say that honey was the most annoying byproduct of beekeeping.
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Oh, I love that.
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I've never heard that and I
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I love
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that
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I thought that number one would be stings, so
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occasional
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stings, but I've come full cycle.
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I started out with a two-frame extractor and then the years passed
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and
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to
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speed this thing up.
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I ended up at Ohio State.
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We never were big, but we had a 20-frame
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DC driven
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30
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frame.
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And we had sumps
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and pumps and we had four hundred hives and now the years have passed
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and I've gotten old and I'm back to seven or eight hives at a two-frame extractor.
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So I'm ending up
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where
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I started.
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What are options for people like me?
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Let's start with the small people like I am
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now.
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And
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then
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if they're really into it, they're quickly trading that in
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or putting it in the attic.
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At that early stage people should just borrow the extractor from their
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their
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beekeeping club and see how they like beekeeping before they buy a tiny little extractor really.
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Sorry, Betterbee, we do sell a lot of those small ones, but I just said don't buy 'em.
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You know, there's the
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the beekeeping clubs pretty often have
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uh
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whole extracting setup to loan.
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And clubs are something that the beginner should always be aware of for every reason.
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Well I agree, but I want to go one step further.
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On that two
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frame you bought and you outgrew it quickly, just put it up in the top of the barn and let it sit there
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because if you keep bees for fifty-five years
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You're gonna get it back down and
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and use it again and it's going to be stainless steel.
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It's not going to be plastic.
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It'll be a useful gadget
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There is a plastic extractor.
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It's the least expensive, weirdest little thing I've ever seen, but it works.
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It's like for the
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person
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who jumps into things really quickly with or maybe the student or something like that.
00:04:03.260 --> 00:04:05.260
Usually it's stainless steel though.
00:04:05.260 --> 00:04:08.620
It's never gonna go wrong if you put it away and take it out again.
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Stainless is forever
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Well, that's exactly what happened to me, and I'm using the extractor now.
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And and happily
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it's an old A.I.
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Root—
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no offense to Betterbee—but it's an old A.I. Root
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motorized.
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two-frame extractor.
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They were using some kind of sewing machine motor on it to drive the extractor.
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That's the kind of AI like.
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So
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that's kind of
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Kind of an old-fashioned gadget.
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I always wonder how to go about this.
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In
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in the earliest days when I was at Maryland, I used a Walter T.
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Kelly vibrating knife.
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It was a contraption with a horizontal knife.
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They sold them forever.
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I figured out a way to use a pressure cooker without the safety valve on it, which is going to make a lot of people, including me, cringe.
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And I would use that to provide steam heat for the blade.
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I thought I was just Mr.
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Modern.
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Somewhere there's a picture of me with a head full of hair and a skinny guy and no
00:05:03.940 --> 00:05:04.900
no belly
00:05:05.320 --> 00:05:05.560
running
00:05:05.800 --> 00:05:06.360
that odd
00:05:06.520 --> 00:05:07.720
frame across that thing.
00:05:07.720 --> 00:05:09.800
And I just thought that that was the epitome
00:05:09.960 --> 00:05:11.400
of modernness.
00:05:11.400 --> 00:05:13.400
So I took off the pressure weight
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off
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the pressure cooker.
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I hope I didn't manufacture a bomb.
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But I enjoyed those old techniques.
00:05:18.919 --> 00:05:23.800
And I'm talking too much, but in the earliest days of my beekeeping you could make
00:05:23.960 --> 00:05:26.599
There were plans for making an extractor.
00:05:26.599 --> 00:05:26.840
Now
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hold your nose
00:05:28.599 --> 00:05:30.919
using a galvanized garbage can
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and the drive mechanism off a bicycle
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to spin a basket that you made out of, uh,
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quarter-inch
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mesh
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hardware cloth.
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You take off one of the pedals and the bicycle drive mechanism was lying sideways
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And then you'd use that to drive the extractor, and then when you'd stop driving it, the clutch would engage and the thing would coast
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Now you needed to be a
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a good machinist.
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You need a you didn't never know what you were doing, but you could make a remarkably efficient
00:06:01.280 --> 00:06:01.919
extractor
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using galvanized which is not good.
00:06:11.840 --> 00:06:14.560
I think it could be good, but I'm picturing people
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just cleaning up a can and getting a a pedal set off of some old junkie
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bike.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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Use Clorox wipes on that.
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Well, we're past all that.
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What about uncapping knives?
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You know, I'm surprised that more people don't know about the uncapping plane.
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I love the uncapping plane and when I describe it to people it seems like their eyes light up and they go
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What do you call that again?
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All they know of is the
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the long knife, the heated knife or the cold knife, and the plane looks like uh
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a razor, you know, like uh you'd shave your face with
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It's just bigger.
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It's like uh
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as wide across as a medium frame is tall
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and it's heated with a self-contained
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electric element and
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plug, and it's just a better motion.
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I love the plane.
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You know, I know those exist and I've seen people use them, but in my life, oddly, I've never owned one.
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Yeah, it's a pulling motion and uh I started to get a a real pain in my wrist when I was using the knife for
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days
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and so uh
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I
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just
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uh
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I gotta recommend the
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the plane to people.
00:07:23.460 --> 00:07:24.820
Give it a try
00:07:24.560 --> 00:07:28.240
Let's come back and talk more about knives and planes.
00:07:28.240 --> 00:07:31.199
Sounds good.
00:07:31.199 --> 00:07:37.040
Looking to re-queen a hive, make a split, or build your own nucs this season?
00:07:37.040 --> 00:07:39.360
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We'd like to thank Vita
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Bee Health
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for supporting this podcast.
00:08:16.120 --> 00:08:16.440
Vita
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provides proven tools for controlling Varroa, Apistan, and Apiguard
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to the new Varroxsan
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extended-release oxalic acid strips.
00:08:29.040 --> 00:08:29.520
You touched
00:08:29.680 --> 00:08:33.120
on something and kept right on going that I wanted to go back to.
00:08:33.120 --> 00:08:35.760
You know most of us envision using that hot knife
00:08:35.919 --> 00:08:36.400
or nice
00:08:36.560 --> 00:08:36.880
white
00:08:37.039 --> 00:08:37.360
light
00:08:37.520 --> 00:08:39.360
combs.
00:08:38.659 --> 00:08:49.140
But if you get honeycombs with stored honey that's older and been used several seasons and gotten dark, that can really stress you, your wrist, and the knife.
00:08:48.959 --> 00:08:50.399
To hack through that.
00:08:50.399 --> 00:08:54.640
It kind of is the same thing as when people do beekeeping their first
00:08:54.800 --> 00:08:55.120
year
00:08:55.360 --> 00:08:59.920
or, you know, two years and then they feel like that's the only way to do beekeeping.
00:08:59.920 --> 00:09:00.399
You know, you
00:09:00.640 --> 00:09:03.760
gotta progress and keep learning.
00:09:03.140 --> 00:09:04.340
You may grow to
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to seven or fourteen hives and still act like it's your first year
00:09:08.420 --> 00:09:13.220
and you gotta, you know, understand there's more and different ways to do things.
00:09:13.160 --> 00:09:14.680
It's my personality
00:09:15.000 --> 00:09:17.240
to talk about the negative things.
00:09:17.240 --> 00:09:18.760
And so the wrist pain
00:09:18.920 --> 00:09:20.840
and the stickiness and all that.
00:09:20.840 --> 00:09:24.760
But a good honey crop in the can is really a rewarding thing.
00:09:24.820 --> 00:09:25.380
But it
00:09:25.540 --> 00:09:28.660
it really is uh a challenge to get it all done.
00:09:28.820 --> 00:09:31.540
And in the earliest days, people
00:09:31.860 --> 00:09:36.020
just used a straight knife and you hacked through it.
00:09:35.959 --> 00:09:37.640
And then there was a serrated
00:09:37.800 --> 00:09:40.360
edged knife that came along.
00:09:40.360 --> 00:09:43.080
And then in the old books, yeah, the cold knife.
00:09:43.080 --> 00:09:46.440
And then they would tell you to take a cold knife and put it in hot water
00:09:46.600 --> 00:09:49.399
and to rotate that every now and then
00:09:49.820 --> 00:09:49.980
uh
00:09:50.220 --> 00:09:51.260
you know, swap out.
00:09:51.260 --> 00:09:54.220
So when that knife would quickly get cold, when it was
00:09:54.620 --> 00:09:56.700
especially up against cold honey.
00:09:56.700 --> 00:09:58.300
So those old those older people
00:09:58.460 --> 00:10:00.620
they really had to work at getting that honey off.
00:10:00.620 --> 00:10:04.380
We'd we'd like to think that these combs are all nice and new and they come right off
00:10:04.660 --> 00:10:05.300
Often you get
00:10:05.460 --> 00:10:06.820
you get that nice canary
00:10:07.060 --> 00:10:07.620
yellow beeswax,
00:10:07.780 --> 00:10:12.260
but sometimes those combs are not that great and you want the honey out of that.
00:10:12.360 --> 00:10:13.880
Yeah, I know some people who
00:10:14.040 --> 00:10:17.400
year after year are using the cold knife and they just say they love it.
00:10:17.400 --> 00:10:20.120
But there's there's other ways to do things.
00:10:20.120 --> 00:10:20.520
Actually
00:10:20.680 --> 00:10:23.320
the person that says that is very young and strong.
00:10:23.320 --> 00:10:24.840
But you know, you could just
00:10:24.940 --> 00:10:27.740
Scratch at them, you know, you don't get any wax
00:10:27.980 --> 00:10:28.780
then, but
00:10:29.020 --> 00:10:32.380
there's rollers, there's steam-heated
00:10:32.620 --> 00:10:34.940
rollers, there's scratchers
00:10:35.259 --> 00:10:37.019
Have you seen that steam-heated
00:10:37.259 --> 00:10:37.660
roller
00:10:37.819 --> 00:10:44.300
that sits on the on the top of an uncapping tank and you just sort of press your frame straight down into it and up again?
00:10:44.040 --> 00:10:49.080
It's just gonna pierce all the capping so they've kind of gone past all these circular blades
00:10:49.320 --> 00:10:50.920
once down and once up.
00:10:50.920 --> 00:10:52.120
It's kind of neat
00:10:52.259 --> 00:10:52.579
Betterbee
00:10:52.740 --> 00:10:52.899
00:10:53.060 --> 00:10:53.699
has that, but
00:10:53.860 --> 00:10:59.300
you know, for hobbyists we also have all the smaller versions like just capping scratchers.
00:10:59.300 --> 00:11:01.220
You know, that pierces the cappings
00:11:01.380 --> 00:11:03.139
and the honey will come out.
00:11:03.139 --> 00:11:04.180
You don't use
00:11:04.640 --> 00:11:05.440
And don't have any
00:11:05.680 --> 00:11:08.240
cappings later to make candles out of though.
00:11:08.560 --> 00:11:11.360
Well what are you gonna do with all that when it rises to the top?
00:11:11.360 --> 00:11:13.840
You've gotta let that settle, so you may not get as
00:11:14.060 --> 00:11:14.140
as
00:11:14.300 --> 00:11:15.740
many cappings, but you've still got
00:11:16.060 --> 00:11:18.620
You'll get some little remnants 'cause some of
00:11:18.780 --> 00:11:19.900
of those torn
00:11:20.220 --> 00:11:21.580
cappings will tear off
00:11:21.740 --> 00:11:21.900
uh
00:11:22.060 --> 00:11:22.300
and
00:11:22.460 --> 00:11:24.700
come to the top surface of your honey.
00:11:24.700 --> 00:11:25.740
You're right.
00:11:25.360 --> 00:11:30.560
Yeah, somebody was asking me all about that the other day and what does she do when she's finished bottling
00:11:30.720 --> 00:11:31.680
in her bucket
00:11:31.840 --> 00:11:34.800
and the surface has that fine layer of
00:11:34.959 --> 00:11:35.360
wax
00:11:35.519 --> 00:11:36.080
up on it.
00:11:36.080 --> 00:11:36.959
What do I do?
00:11:36.959 --> 00:11:37.760
What do I do?
00:11:37.760 --> 00:11:38.160
And I
00:11:38.320 --> 00:11:40.320
I said, you know, don't
00:11:40.480 --> 00:11:46.320
don't bottle it for giving away or selling in those jars 'cause it's gonna look weird, but
00:11:46.540 --> 00:11:49.180
I would just eat that honey from that last
00:11:49.500 --> 00:11:52.540
that last bottle, the last two bottles that came with that
00:11:52.700 --> 00:11:55.899
layer of fluffy, fine wax on it.
00:11:55.899 --> 00:11:56.220
It's
00:11:56.380 --> 00:11:57.740
it's delicious actually.
00:11:57.740 --> 00:11:59.180
It's a different taste
00:11:59.060 --> 00:12:00.500
I've never thought about doing that.
00:12:00.500 --> 00:12:01.860
I always skim it off.
00:12:01.860 --> 00:12:01.940
And
00:12:02.180 --> 00:12:02.900
do what?
00:12:03.140 --> 00:12:09.860
Strain it, and then you get about two tablespoons of wax out of it, and then you put that in your wax bucket and in fifty years
00:12:10.020 --> 00:12:12.100
you got a whole bucket of wax cappings.
00:12:12.100 --> 00:12:12.900
That's a long-term
00:12:13.220 --> 00:12:13.700
plan.
00:12:13.740 --> 00:12:17.340
You mentioned something a bit ago that flashed me back to an old memory.
00:12:17.340 --> 00:12:17.420
I
00:12:17.580 --> 00:12:21.340
I used to give a lot of TV and radio interviews and whatever.
00:12:21.340 --> 00:12:22.460
Not that I was important.
00:12:22.460 --> 00:12:26.140
I was just I was the representative here in Ohio.
00:12:26.040 --> 00:12:34.120
And I was interviewed by a a reporter from the Cleveland Plain Dealer, and I was explaining all this as though he was an accomplished beekeeper.
00:12:34.040 --> 00:12:37.640
And I mentioned the fact that these cappings and parts of propolis
00:12:37.800 --> 00:12:39.080
rise to the top, and I said, it
00:12:39.240 --> 00:12:41.160
you know, it looks like scum.
00:12:41.160 --> 00:12:42.279
You just break it off
00:12:42.440 --> 00:12:42.760
and
00:12:43.140 --> 00:12:43.460
And it
00:12:43.700 --> 00:12:44.740
everything's fine.
00:12:44.740 --> 00:12:44.980
Well
00:12:45.380 --> 00:12:46.660
of course the guy used the word
00:12:46.820 --> 00:12:52.340
scum, scum, scum throughout the article, and I just cringed every time I read that because
00:12:52.660 --> 00:12:55.620
I just used that one time to give him a visual
00:12:56.020 --> 00:12:56.580
analogy
00:12:56.900 --> 00:12:58.980
so when you're talking to people about bees
00:12:59.140 --> 00:13:00.580
who are not beekeepers—
00:13:00.820 --> 00:13:02.500
don't use words like
00:13:02.740 --> 00:13:03.300
scum
00:13:04.260 --> 00:13:06.180
and junk honey I used the word
00:13:06.340 --> 00:13:07.940
junk honey one time
00:13:08.160 --> 00:13:10.160
And that became the guy's go-to
00:13:10.400 --> 00:13:15.600
information source for what we were going to be talking about was junk honey and what we did with it.
00:13:15.600 --> 00:13:17.440
All right, I'm off the subject
00:13:17.620 --> 00:13:21.300
All right, Anne, how do you keep those small extractors tied
00:13:21.459 --> 00:13:21.779
down?
00:13:21.779 --> 00:13:24.180
They're always like trying to ride a bronco
00:13:24.500 --> 00:13:25.860
in a small room.
00:13:29.400 --> 00:13:30.760
For years, probably
00:13:30.920 --> 00:13:31.240
twenty
00:13:31.400 --> 00:13:35.080
years or more, he had been just shoving it into the corner.
00:13:35.080 --> 00:13:36.600
You know, so he had it with
00:13:36.839 --> 00:13:37.160
straight
00:13:37.319 --> 00:13:41.480
legs not flaring out and he would just push it into a corner
00:13:41.639 --> 00:13:42.040
and like
00:13:42.279 --> 00:13:44.519
lean his hip against it while he cranked it.
00:13:44.519 --> 00:13:46.360
It was on the top the crank.
00:13:46.360 --> 00:13:47.240
But that's
00:13:47.440 --> 00:13:50.480
Other people they tell all their children to sit down al
00:13:50.640 --> 00:13:54.640
along the bottom parts and cling to the legs and things like that.
00:13:54.640 --> 00:13:54.880
But
00:13:55.040 --> 00:13:56.880
early on I learned that
00:13:57.120 --> 00:13:57.200
you
00:13:57.360 --> 00:13:57.760
gotta
00:13:58.320 --> 00:14:00.080
put some chains or uh
00:14:00.620 --> 00:14:01.820
you know, something
00:14:02.140 --> 00:14:04.060
that comes straight down from the
00:14:04.220 --> 00:14:04.380
uh
00:14:04.620 --> 00:14:08.459
top edge and anchor it to the floor anchor it to a
00:14:08.940 --> 00:14:10.780
big piece of plywood and your
00:14:11.100 --> 00:14:14.620
extractors on that, you're standing on that, that's a lot of weight.
00:14:14.620 --> 00:14:19.100
If it still moves around, you could put some weights on it, like buckets of water.
00:14:19.100 --> 00:14:19.900
It's just
00:14:20.120 --> 00:14:24.760
you know, if it's not balanced just right, it's gonna wanna move around and you
00:14:24.920 --> 00:14:25.399
gotta
00:14:25.560 --> 00:14:27.399
hold it down somehow.
00:14:27.399 --> 00:14:29.560
Probably not by asking all your children
00:14:29.720 --> 00:14:31.800
or bringing in all the pets.
00:14:31.660 --> 00:14:31.980
You know,
00:14:32.140 --> 00:14:35.260
there's more modern ways of holding something down.
00:14:35.260 --> 00:14:37.580
I almost couldn't believe it until I saw it.
00:14:37.580 --> 00:14:42.380
Someone in my beekeeping club made a stand that was on three wheels.
00:14:42.500 --> 00:14:42.819
And
00:14:42.980 --> 00:14:44.740
it just rolls free.
00:14:45.060 --> 00:14:47.699
And so the extractor kind of does this little
00:14:47.860 --> 00:14:51.699
circular wiggle on the wheels, three wheels.
00:14:51.820 --> 00:14:52.780
as it's going
00:14:52.940 --> 00:14:54.620
and everything is fine.
00:14:54.620 --> 00:15:01.980
It's like you're kind of going with the flow. It wants to do a little wiggle, and you're letting it do it, not resisting the wiggle.
00:15:01.980 --> 00:15:04.460
It's crazy, but it works.
00:15:04.060 --> 00:15:06.300
So it's not restrained to the wall at all.
00:15:06.460 --> 00:15:08.860
It can go across the room if it chose to.
00:15:08.860 --> 00:15:10.620
No, it doesn't go across the room.
00:15:10.620 --> 00:15:12.380
It just does a little kind of a
00:15:12.540 --> 00:15:16.700
tiny circular dance in place on its wheels.
00:15:16.700 --> 00:15:17.180
Okay, I
00:15:17.420 --> 00:15:18.700
I thought it would over time
00:15:18.940 --> 00:15:19.660
move.
00:15:19.660 --> 00:15:22.459
Admittedly he only showed me fifteen seconds of video, but
00:15:22.779 --> 00:15:23.580
Well that's fine.
00:15:23.580 --> 00:15:24.220
I'll take it.
00:15:24.220 --> 00:15:27.740
It sounds like a good idea if you're able to build such a thing.
00:15:27.540 --> 00:15:27.779
It's
00:15:27.940 --> 00:15:28.100
uh
00:15:28.260 --> 00:15:30.740
it's a crazy idea, but it just might work.
00:15:30.740 --> 00:15:30.899
I
00:15:31.140 --> 00:15:33.140
worked out a system myself
00:15:33.620 --> 00:15:37.459
that I can't recommend for anybody else because I happen to have the gadget.
00:15:37.459 --> 00:15:38.100
I've got a
00:15:38.260 --> 00:15:42.260
a small trailer that goes behind my small tractor.
00:15:42.320 --> 00:15:45.520
And ironically, it has springs on it.
00:15:45.520 --> 00:15:45.760
So
00:15:46.000 --> 00:15:49.440
I would bring that trailer into my shop and then I would ratchet
00:15:49.600 --> 00:15:50.160
strap
00:15:50.400 --> 00:15:53.120
my extractor to the trailer.
00:15:53.220 --> 00:15:58.420
And then the springs would absorb a lot of the vibration as the thing bounced around.
00:15:58.420 --> 00:15:58.740
Kinda the
00:15:58.900 --> 00:15:59.460
kind of a
00:15:59.620 --> 00:16:00.820
same idea.
00:16:00.820 --> 00:16:02.980
It's basically the same idea.
00:16:02.980 --> 00:16:06.500
I just happened to have an old trailer that actually had light springs
00:16:06.660 --> 00:16:07.860
on it.
00:16:07.700 --> 00:16:07.940
So
00:16:08.100 --> 00:16:14.339
I could have put four extractors on it; I just had one, so my extracting room was mostly
00:16:14.500 --> 00:16:16.740
dirty trailer from outside.
00:16:22.040 --> 00:16:24.680
We've started to do that here, and it's an
00:16:24.839 --> 00:16:31.160
it's an idea for not just buying a larger extractor when your operation gets bigger.
00:16:31.160 --> 00:16:32.040
You can just
00:16:32.360 --> 00:16:32.600
Like
00:16:32.760 --> 00:16:36.760
say you had a four-frame or a six-frame and you got
00:16:37.400 --> 00:16:39.960
to be too big just to deal with that.
00:16:40.120 --> 00:16:41.800
Like why not just have
00:16:41.960 --> 00:16:42.760
another
00:16:43.400 --> 00:16:46.920
six-frame motorized extractor next to you and you know you
00:16:47.560 --> 00:16:48.120
essentially
00:16:48.280 --> 00:16:51.320
you're filling up something with twelve frames and turning it on
00:16:51.480 --> 00:16:51.720
or
00:16:51.880 --> 00:16:55.720
maybe they could be offset in time so there's just a constant
00:16:55.959 --> 00:16:58.920
You know, that one's running while this one stopped and you unloaded it.
00:16:58.920 --> 00:16:59.320
It's a
00:16:59.560 --> 00:17:00.279
just these
00:17:00.600 --> 00:17:01.080
ideas
00:17:01.320 --> 00:17:04.040
of thinking of a different way to do things.
00:17:04.040 --> 00:17:07.319
You know, without resorting to bicycle parts, Jim.
00:17:07.319 --> 00:17:08.199
Right.
00:17:08.860 --> 00:17:09.659
Well ironically
00:17:09.980 --> 00:17:10.220
I can
00:17:10.380 --> 00:17:10.779
comfortably
00:17:10.939 --> 00:17:11.579
say this.
00:17:11.579 --> 00:17:13.260
There is no standard way.
00:17:13.260 --> 00:17:15.899
It's one of the ways in beekeeping that a beekeeper
00:17:16.059 --> 00:17:17.260
can really express
00:17:22.520 --> 00:17:23.720
Oh yeah, you can make comb
00:17:23.880 --> 00:17:24.920
honey or m other people
00:17:25.080 --> 00:17:26.280
who don't want
00:17:26.440 --> 00:17:27.000
to invest
00:17:27.160 --> 00:17:30.520
in an extractor and they don't know about beekeeping clubs, they
00:17:30.740 --> 00:17:36.820
They actually, can you believe it, scrape the comb off of the frame every time they want, honey?
00:17:36.820 --> 00:17:37.220
And they
00:17:37.540 --> 00:17:38.660
you know, of course you know it
00:17:38.940 --> 00:17:40.299
crush and strain.
00:17:40.299 --> 00:17:43.500
I hate when people tell me they do crush and strain.
00:17:43.500 --> 00:17:46.940
All that wax the bees made, it's just, you know
00:17:47.440 --> 00:17:50.960
each year, but they are getting the freshest, most amazing color
00:17:51.120 --> 00:17:51.519
wax.
00:17:51.519 --> 00:17:54.000
I hope they make some candles out of it, but
00:17:54.240 --> 00:17:55.039
I kind of
00:17:55.279 --> 00:17:55.600
uh
00:17:55.919 --> 00:17:57.360
just cringe when I hear
00:17:57.519 --> 00:17:58.000
crush and
00:17:58.240 --> 00:17:58.880
strain.
00:17:58.880 --> 00:17:59.679
It's the twenty-first
00:18:00.000 --> 00:18:00.399
century
00:18:00.559 --> 00:18:01.200
folks
00:18:12.640 --> 00:18:14.080
that was capped honey
00:18:14.240 --> 00:18:17.840
and it was just too much to put into frames
00:18:18.000 --> 00:18:19.200
and I wanted to
00:18:19.520 --> 00:18:22.240
minimize what was put into the frames for the
00:18:22.540 --> 00:18:26.780
colony I kept so I just did the brood comb and some honey.
00:18:26.780 --> 00:18:27.980
This would be excess.
00:18:27.980 --> 00:18:30.460
I would crush it in a colander
00:18:31.100 --> 00:18:35.180
and just keep mashing it like with a potato masher or something.
00:18:34.940 --> 00:18:39.580
you know, these are slabs of comb that were cut out of a wall or something like that.
00:18:39.580 --> 00:18:44.059
It's not hard to crush it if it's only one year, you know, a few months
00:18:44.220 --> 00:18:44.539
really
00:18:44.860 --> 00:18:45.740
old.
00:18:45.740 --> 00:18:47.659
It's very easy.
00:18:47.240 --> 00:18:49.080
That's another way to do it.
00:18:49.080 --> 00:18:49.320
And
00:18:49.560 --> 00:18:50.920
years ago there was a
00:18:51.080 --> 00:18:51.640
a uh
00:18:51.880 --> 00:18:53.160
wax press
00:18:53.400 --> 00:18:55.400
that was sold by the companies and you was
00:18:55.640 --> 00:18:57.480
it looked like a fruit press.
00:18:57.000 --> 00:18:57.080
Oh
00:18:57.240 --> 00:18:57.400
like
00:18:57.560 --> 00:18:58.360
yeah, like a cider
00:18:58.520 --> 00:18:59.240
press, yeah.
00:18:59.240 --> 00:19:00.520
We got one of those too.
00:19:00.520 --> 00:19:02.280
It's a very shiny modern one.
00:19:02.280 --> 00:19:03.560
Those are cool.
00:19:03.560 --> 00:19:05.080
I wonder if you could use that to
00:19:05.240 --> 00:19:07.000
to squeeze honey out of comb.
00:19:07.000 --> 00:19:09.160
Oh yeah, yeah, definitely.
00:19:08.840 --> 00:19:11.400
It's again though, it's kind of a shame.
00:19:11.400 --> 00:19:14.360
It's uh like a modern version
00:19:14.520 --> 00:19:15.000
of uh
00:19:15.240 --> 00:19:16.200
the old cider
00:19:16.360 --> 00:19:19.160
press kind of thing that a family would have.
00:19:19.160 --> 00:19:21.560
Anne, I'm so sorry, but I have to be the timekeeper
00:19:21.720 --> 00:19:23.320
here and our time is up.
00:19:23.320 --> 00:19:26.120
We could keep on going, but basically
00:19:26.440 --> 00:19:33.960
I've decided that there's no standard way. You do whatever's creative and clever for your individual operation and be prepared to change
00:19:34.240 --> 00:19:36.320
When something better comes along.
00:19:36.400 --> 00:19:38.320
Definitely keep things clean.
00:19:38.320 --> 00:19:42.240
Don't say hey this is a natural product and let things get all dirty.
00:19:42.480 --> 00:19:43.040
So uh
00:19:43.200 --> 00:19:46.640
yeah, I think we've covered a lot of uh points here.
00:19:46.640 --> 00:19:48.720
If you say we have to stop, we have to
00:19:50.040 --> 00:19:50.680
Say bye,
00:19:50.840 --> 00:19:51.400
Anne.
00:19:51.400 --> 00:19:51.640
Bye,
00:19:51.800 --> 00:19:52.360
Anne.
00:19:52.360 --> 00:19:53.400
All right, I'm saying
00:19:53.560 --> 00:19:54.520
bye, listeners.
00:19:54.520 --> 00:19:54.680
Bye,
00:19:54.840 --> 00:19:55.480
listeners.
00:19:55.480 --> 00:19:55.720
Bye,
00:19:55.880 --> 00:20:01.240
Jim.
00:00:01.600 --> 00:00:05.520
Hey listeners, it's Jim here again this week.
00:00:05.520 --> 00:00:08.080
I've got a fairly routine special guest.
00:00:08.080 --> 00:00:10.240
Even though she's routine, she's still special.
00:00:10.240 --> 00:00:10.720
Say hi
00:00:10.880 --> 00:00:11.040
and
00:00:11.460 --> 00:00:12.660
Hi, it's Anne Frey
00:00:12.980 --> 00:00:14.020
with Jim today.
00:00:14.100 --> 00:00:14.980
She's from Betterbee,
00:00:15.140 --> 00:00:18.420
Bee, people who provide bee supplies to the world.
00:00:18.420 --> 00:00:22.740
Anne and I were talking about this time of the year when we extract honey
00:00:23.340 --> 00:00:26.060
What do you do if you're a smaller producer,
00:00:26.220 --> 00:00:27.260
even a larger one?
00:00:27.500 --> 00:00:32.780
What are the options available for uncapping and straining and whatever?
00:00:32.780 --> 00:00:35.980
It's an old topic, but it's always a messy topic.
00:00:35.980 --> 00:00:36.140
And
00:00:36.300 --> 00:00:38.060
I'd like for you and me to discuss it.
00:00:38.340 --> 00:00:39.539
Sounds good.
00:00:39.539 --> 00:00:41.059
I like this topic.
00:00:41.059 --> 00:00:44.100
Honey Bee Obscura listeners, I'm Jim Tew
00:00:44.260 --> 00:00:46.579
and I come to you here once a week at Honey
00:00:46.739 --> 00:00:47.699
Bee Obscura.
00:00:47.699 --> 00:00:47.940
Today
00:00:48.100 --> 00:00:50.339
Anne and I will try to talk about something you do
00:00:50.579 --> 00:00:51.219
with plain
00:00:51.379 --> 00:00:52.899
talk beekeeping.
00:00:53.100 --> 00:01:01.100
Welcome to Honey Bee Obscura, brought to you by Growing Planet Media, the producers of the Beekeeping Today
00:01:01.260 --> 00:01:02.860
podcast.
00:01:02.860 --> 00:01:07.580
Join Jim Tew, your guide through the complexities, the beauty, the
00:01:08.340 --> 00:01:11.860
fun and the challenges of managing honey bees.
00:01:11.860 --> 00:01:18.659
Jim hosts fun and interesting guests who take a deep dive into the intricate world of honey bees.
00:01:18.659 --> 00:01:22.740
Whether you're a seasoned beekeeper or just getting started, get ready for
00:01:23.260 --> 00:01:26.780
some plain talk that'll delve into all things honey bees.
00:01:27.340 --> 00:01:31.259
Extracting honey is like me trying to make biscuits.
00:01:31.259 --> 00:01:37.420
The only place I don't have flour in my house is down on the mailbox down by the road.
00:01:36.939 --> 00:01:43.740
It's just the biggest mess, and I try not to splash it to make a mess, but I just get flour everywhere.
00:01:43.740 --> 00:01:48.380
When I try to extract honey, why does it always end up being kind of a
00:01:48.920 --> 00:01:52.600
kind of an exciting, sticky, tasty, sweet job.
00:01:52.600 --> 00:01:59.159
It's just one of those things that's not really beekeeping, but it's certainly an aspect of beekeeping.
00:01:58.700 --> 00:01:58.860
I
00:01:59.020 --> 00:02:00.140
used to have a friend, he
00:02:00.299 --> 00:02:00.860
passed away
00:02:01.020 --> 00:02:05.740
now, he used to say that honey was the most annoying byproduct of beekeeping.
00:02:05.740 --> 00:02:07.100
Oh, I love that.
00:02:07.100 --> 00:02:08.619
I've never heard that and I
00:02:08.860 --> 00:02:09.259
I love
00:02:09.580 --> 00:02:09.899
that
00:02:10.240 --> 00:02:12.400
I thought that number one would be stings, so
00:02:12.640 --> 00:02:13.200
occasional
00:02:13.360 --> 00:02:15.920
stings, but I've come full cycle.
00:02:15.920 --> 00:02:19.760
I started out with a two-frame extractor and then the years passed
00:02:19.920 --> 00:02:20.240
and
00:02:20.720 --> 00:02:20.879
to
00:02:21.120 --> 00:02:22.079
speed this thing up.
00:02:22.079 --> 00:02:23.519
I ended up at Ohio State.
00:02:23.519 --> 00:02:26.319
We never were big, but we had a 20-frame
00:02:26.480 --> 00:02:27.680
DC driven
00:02:28.239 --> 00:02:28.720
30
00:02:28.879 --> 00:02:29.840
frame.
00:02:29.820 --> 00:02:30.940
And we had sumps
00:02:31.100 --> 00:02:35.500
and pumps and we had four hundred hives and now the years have passed
00:02:35.660 --> 00:02:40.300
and I've gotten old and I'm back to seven or eight hives at a two-frame extractor.
00:02:40.300 --> 00:02:41.580
So I'm ending up
00:02:41.900 --> 00:02:42.060
where
00:02:42.220 --> 00:02:43.340
I started.
00:02:43.340 --> 00:02:45.660
What are options for people like me?
00:02:45.660 --> 00:02:47.900
Let's start with the small people like I am
00:02:48.060 --> 00:02:48.700
now.
00:02:55.320 --> 00:02:55.560
And
00:02:55.880 --> 00:02:56.200
then
00:02:56.520 --> 00:02:59.960
if they're really into it, they're quickly trading that in
00:03:00.120 --> 00:03:01.960
or putting it in the attic.
00:03:01.960 --> 00:03:05.400
At that early stage people should just borrow the extractor from their
00:03:05.560 --> 00:03:05.640
their
00:03:05.799 --> 00:03:11.560
beekeeping club and see how they like beekeeping before they buy a tiny little extractor really.
00:03:11.560 --> 00:03:16.040
Sorry, Betterbee, we do sell a lot of those small ones, but I just said don't buy 'em.
00:03:16.040 --> 00:03:16.840
You know, there's the
00:03:17.000 --> 00:03:19.400
the beekeeping clubs pretty often have
00:03:19.720 --> 00:03:19.959
uh
00:03:20.120 --> 00:03:22.280
whole extracting setup to loan.
00:03:22.280 --> 00:03:27.640
And clubs are something that the beginner should always be aware of for every reason.
00:03:27.560 --> 00:03:29.879
Well I agree, but I want to go one step further.
00:03:29.879 --> 00:03:30.360
On that two
00:03:30.680 --> 00:03:36.840
frame you bought and you outgrew it quickly, just put it up in the top of the barn and let it sit there
00:03:37.000 --> 00:03:39.400
because if you keep bees for fifty-five years
00:03:39.840 --> 00:03:41.520
You're gonna get it back down and
00:03:41.680 --> 00:03:44.960
and use it again and it's going to be stainless steel.
00:03:44.960 --> 00:03:46.800
It's not going to be plastic.
00:03:46.800 --> 00:03:48.720
It'll be a useful gadget
00:03:48.840 --> 00:03:51.080
There is a plastic extractor.
00:03:51.080 --> 00:03:56.120
It's the least expensive, weirdest little thing I've ever seen, but it works.
00:03:56.120 --> 00:03:57.720
It's like for the
00:03:58.299 --> 00:03:58.459
person
00:03:58.620 --> 00:04:03.260
who jumps into things really quickly with or maybe the student or something like that.
00:04:03.260 --> 00:04:05.260
Usually it's stainless steel though.
00:04:05.260 --> 00:04:08.620
It's never gonna go wrong if you put it away and take it out again.
00:04:08.620 --> 00:04:10.540
Stainless is forever
00:04:10.560 --> 00:04:14.560
Well, that's exactly what happened to me, and I'm using the extractor now.
00:04:14.560 --> 00:04:15.439
And and happily
00:04:15.599 --> 00:04:16.400
it's an old A.I.
00:04:16.639 --> 00:04:17.199
Root—
00:04:17.359 --> 00:04:19.440
no offense to Betterbee—but it's an old A.I. Root
00:04:19.600 --> 00:04:21.040
motorized.
00:04:21.199 --> 00:04:22.560
two-frame extractor.
00:04:22.560 --> 00:04:26.720
They were using some kind of sewing machine motor on it to drive the extractor.
00:04:26.720 --> 00:04:28.720
That's the kind of AI like.
00:04:28.720 --> 00:04:28.960
So
00:04:29.120 --> 00:04:30.080
that's kind of
00:04:30.639 --> 00:04:32.800
Kind of an old-fashioned gadget.
00:04:32.800 --> 00:04:35.040
I always wonder how to go about this.
00:04:35.040 --> 00:04:35.120
In
00:04:35.280 --> 00:04:38.960
in the earliest days when I was at Maryland, I used a Walter T.
00:04:38.960 --> 00:04:41.759
Kelly vibrating knife.
00:04:41.639 --> 00:04:44.360
It was a contraption with a horizontal knife.
00:04:44.360 --> 00:04:46.040
They sold them forever.
00:04:46.040 --> 00:04:53.960
I figured out a way to use a pressure cooker without the safety valve on it, which is going to make a lot of people, including me, cringe.
00:04:53.860 --> 00:04:57.300
And I would use that to provide steam heat for the blade.
00:04:57.300 --> 00:04:58.740
I thought I was just Mr.
00:04:58.740 --> 00:04:59.540
Modern.
00:04:59.540 --> 00:05:03.620
Somewhere there's a picture of me with a head full of hair and a skinny guy and no
00:05:03.940 --> 00:05:04.900
no belly
00:05:05.320 --> 00:05:05.560
running
00:05:05.800 --> 00:05:06.360
that odd
00:05:06.520 --> 00:05:07.720
frame across that thing.
00:05:07.720 --> 00:05:09.800
And I just thought that that was the epitome
00:05:09.960 --> 00:05:11.400
of modernness.
00:05:11.400 --> 00:05:13.400
So I took off the pressure weight
00:05:13.639 --> 00:05:13.720
off
00:05:13.880 --> 00:05:14.840
the pressure cooker.
00:05:14.840 --> 00:05:16.520
I hope I didn't manufacture a bomb.
00:05:16.520 --> 00:05:18.919
But I enjoyed those old techniques.
00:05:18.919 --> 00:05:23.800
And I'm talking too much, but in the earliest days of my beekeeping you could make
00:05:23.960 --> 00:05:26.599
There were plans for making an extractor.
00:05:26.599 --> 00:05:26.840
Now
00:05:27.000 --> 00:05:28.280
hold your nose
00:05:28.599 --> 00:05:30.919
using a galvanized garbage can
00:05:31.159 --> 00:05:34.280
and the drive mechanism off a bicycle
00:05:34.360 --> 00:05:37.160
to spin a basket that you made out of, uh,
00:05:37.320 --> 00:05:37.560
quarter-inch
00:05:37.720 --> 00:05:38.120
mesh
00:05:38.280 --> 00:05:39.480
hardware cloth.
00:05:39.480 --> 00:05:44.920
You take off one of the pedals and the bicycle drive mechanism was lying sideways
00:05:45.139 --> 00:05:52.419
And then you'd use that to drive the extractor, and then when you'd stop driving it, the clutch would engage and the thing would coast
00:05:52.940 --> 00:05:54.140
Now you needed to be a
00:05:54.300 --> 00:05:55.580
a good machinist.
00:05:55.580 --> 00:06:00.540
You need a you didn't never know what you were doing, but you could make a remarkably efficient
00:06:01.280 --> 00:06:01.919
extractor
00:06:02.159 --> 00:06:04.000
using galvanized which is not good.
00:06:11.840 --> 00:06:14.560
I think it could be good, but I'm picturing people
00:06:14.800 --> 00:06:19.680
just cleaning up a can and getting a a pedal set off of some old junkie
00:06:19.840 --> 00:06:20.480
bike.
00:06:20.640 --> 00:06:21.200
Yeah.
00:06:21.200 --> 00:06:21.600
Yeah.
00:06:21.680 --> 00:06:23.920
Use Clorox wipes on that.
00:06:24.160 --> 00:06:26.400
Well, we're past all that.
00:06:25.960 --> 00:06:28.039
What about uncapping knives?
00:06:28.039 --> 00:06:31.720
You know, I'm surprised that more people don't know about the uncapping plane.
00:06:31.720 --> 00:06:37.800
I love the uncapping plane and when I describe it to people it seems like their eyes light up and they go
00:06:37.960 --> 00:06:39.479
What do you call that again?
00:06:39.479 --> 00:06:41.000
All they know of is the
00:06:41.159 --> 00:06:46.280
the long knife, the heated knife or the cold knife, and the plane looks like uh
00:06:46.440 --> 00:06:50.120
a razor, you know, like uh you'd shave your face with
00:06:50.340 --> 00:06:51.380
It's just bigger.
00:06:51.380 --> 00:06:52.100
It's like uh
00:06:52.260 --> 00:06:55.380
as wide across as a medium frame is tall
00:06:55.540 --> 00:06:57.380
and it's heated with a self-contained
00:06:57.540 --> 00:06:59.380
electric element and
00:06:59.700 --> 00:07:02.820
plug, and it's just a better motion.
00:07:02.820 --> 00:07:05.060
I love the plane.
00:07:04.620 --> 00:07:10.460
You know, I know those exist and I've seen people use them, but in my life, oddly, I've never owned one.
00:07:10.460 --> 00:07:16.539
Yeah, it's a pulling motion and uh I started to get a a real pain in my wrist when I was using the knife for
00:07:16.740 --> 00:07:17.140
days
00:07:17.460 --> 00:07:18.420
and so uh
00:07:18.900 --> 00:07:19.220
I
00:07:19.780 --> 00:07:20.100
just
00:07:20.260 --> 00:07:20.500
uh
00:07:20.660 --> 00:07:22.100
I gotta recommend the
00:07:22.260 --> 00:07:23.460
the plane to people.
00:07:23.460 --> 00:07:24.820
Give it a try
00:07:24.560 --> 00:07:28.240
Let's come back and talk more about knives and planes.
00:07:28.240 --> 00:07:31.199
Sounds good.
00:07:31.199 --> 00:07:37.040
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00:07:37.040 --> 00:07:39.360
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00:07:39.560 --> 00:07:42.600
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00:07:44.280 --> 00:07:47.960
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00:08:12.360 --> 00:08:13.720
We'd like to thank Vita
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00:08:14.600 --> 00:08:16.120
for supporting this podcast.
00:08:16.120 --> 00:08:16.440
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00:08:16.600 --> 00:08:21.160
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00:08:29.040 --> 00:08:29.520
You touched
00:08:29.680 --> 00:08:33.120
on something and kept right on going that I wanted to go back to.
00:08:33.120 --> 00:08:35.760
You know most of us envision using that hot knife
00:08:35.919 --> 00:08:36.400
or nice
00:08:36.560 --> 00:08:36.880
white
00:08:37.039 --> 00:08:37.360
light
00:08:37.520 --> 00:08:39.360
combs.
00:08:38.659 --> 00:08:49.140
But if you get honeycombs with stored honey that's older and been used several seasons and gotten dark, that can really stress you, your wrist, and the knife.
00:08:48.959 --> 00:08:50.399
To hack through that.
00:08:50.399 --> 00:08:54.640
It kind of is the same thing as when people do beekeeping their first
00:08:54.800 --> 00:08:55.120
year
00:08:55.360 --> 00:08:59.920
or, you know, two years and then they feel like that's the only way to do beekeeping.
00:08:59.920 --> 00:09:00.399
You know, you
00:09:00.640 --> 00:09:03.760
gotta progress and keep learning.
00:09:03.140 --> 00:09:04.340
You may grow to
00:09:04.500 --> 00:09:08.260
to seven or fourteen hives and still act like it's your first year
00:09:08.420 --> 00:09:13.220
and you gotta, you know, understand there's more and different ways to do things.
00:09:13.160 --> 00:09:14.680
It's my personality
00:09:15.000 --> 00:09:17.240
to talk about the negative things.
00:09:17.240 --> 00:09:18.760
And so the wrist pain
00:09:18.920 --> 00:09:20.840
and the stickiness and all that.
00:09:20.840 --> 00:09:24.760
But a good honey crop in the can is really a rewarding thing.
00:09:24.820 --> 00:09:25.380
But it
00:09:25.540 --> 00:09:28.660
it really is uh a challenge to get it all done.
00:09:28.820 --> 00:09:31.540
And in the earliest days, people
00:09:31.860 --> 00:09:36.020
just used a straight knife and you hacked through it.
00:09:35.959 --> 00:09:37.640
And then there was a serrated
00:09:37.800 --> 00:09:40.360
edged knife that came along.
00:09:40.360 --> 00:09:43.080
And then in the old books, yeah, the cold knife.
00:09:43.080 --> 00:09:46.440
And then they would tell you to take a cold knife and put it in hot water
00:09:46.600 --> 00:09:49.399
and to rotate that every now and then
00:09:49.820 --> 00:09:49.980
uh
00:09:50.220 --> 00:09:51.260
you know, swap out.
00:09:51.260 --> 00:09:54.220
So when that knife would quickly get cold, when it was
00:09:54.620 --> 00:09:56.700
especially up against cold honey.
00:09:56.700 --> 00:09:58.300
So those old those older people
00:09:58.460 --> 00:10:00.620
they really had to work at getting that honey off.
00:10:00.620 --> 00:10:04.380
We'd we'd like to think that these combs are all nice and new and they come right off
00:10:04.660 --> 00:10:05.300
Often you get
00:10:05.460 --> 00:10:06.820
you get that nice canary
00:10:07.060 --> 00:10:07.620
yellow beeswax,
00:10:07.780 --> 00:10:12.260
but sometimes those combs are not that great and you want the honey out of that.
00:10:12.360 --> 00:10:13.880
Yeah, I know some people who
00:10:14.040 --> 00:10:17.400
year after year are using the cold knife and they just say they love it.
00:10:17.400 --> 00:10:20.120
But there's there's other ways to do things.
00:10:20.120 --> 00:10:20.520
Actually
00:10:20.680 --> 00:10:23.320
the person that says that is very young and strong.
00:10:23.320 --> 00:10:24.840
But you know, you could just
00:10:24.940 --> 00:10:27.740
Scratch at them, you know, you don't get any wax
00:10:27.980 --> 00:10:28.780
then, but
00:10:29.020 --> 00:10:32.380
there's rollers, there's steam-heated
00:10:32.620 --> 00:10:34.940
rollers, there's scratchers
00:10:35.259 --> 00:10:37.019
Have you seen that steam-heated
00:10:37.259 --> 00:10:37.660
roller
00:10:37.819 --> 00:10:44.300
that sits on the on the top of an uncapping tank and you just sort of press your frame straight down into it and up again?
00:10:44.040 --> 00:10:49.080
It's just gonna pierce all the capping so they've kind of gone past all these circular blades
00:10:49.320 --> 00:10:50.920
once down and once up.
00:10:50.920 --> 00:10:52.120
It's kind of neat
00:10:52.259 --> 00:10:52.579
Betterbee
00:10:52.740 --> 00:10:52.899
00:10:53.060 --> 00:10:53.699
has that, but
00:10:53.860 --> 00:10:59.300
you know, for hobbyists we also have all the smaller versions like just capping scratchers.
00:10:59.300 --> 00:11:01.220
You know, that pierces the cappings
00:11:01.380 --> 00:11:03.139
and the honey will come out.
00:11:03.139 --> 00:11:04.180
You don't use
00:11:04.640 --> 00:11:05.440
And don't have any
00:11:05.680 --> 00:11:08.240
cappings later to make candles out of though.
00:11:08.560 --> 00:11:11.360
Well what are you gonna do with all that when it rises to the top?
00:11:11.360 --> 00:11:13.840
You've gotta let that settle, so you may not get as
00:11:14.060 --> 00:11:14.140
as
00:11:14.300 --> 00:11:15.740
many cappings, but you've still got
00:11:16.060 --> 00:11:18.620
You'll get some little remnants 'cause some of
00:11:18.780 --> 00:11:19.900
of those torn
00:11:20.220 --> 00:11:21.580
cappings will tear off
00:11:21.740 --> 00:11:21.900
uh
00:11:22.060 --> 00:11:22.300
and
00:11:22.460 --> 00:11:24.700
come to the top surface of your honey.
00:11:24.700 --> 00:11:25.740
You're right.
00:11:25.360 --> 00:11:30.560
Yeah, somebody was asking me all about that the other day and what does she do when she's finished bottling
00:11:30.720 --> 00:11:31.680
in her bucket
00:11:31.840 --> 00:11:34.800
and the surface has that fine layer of
00:11:34.959 --> 00:11:35.360
wax
00:11:35.519 --> 00:11:36.080
up on it.
00:11:36.080 --> 00:11:36.959
What do I do?
00:11:36.959 --> 00:11:37.760
What do I do?
00:11:37.760 --> 00:11:38.160
And I
00:11:38.320 --> 00:11:40.320
I said, you know, don't
00:11:40.480 --> 00:11:46.320
don't bottle it for giving away or selling in those jars 'cause it's gonna look weird, but
00:11:46.540 --> 00:11:49.180
I would just eat that honey from that last
00:11:49.500 --> 00:11:52.540
that last bottle, the last two bottles that came with that
00:11:52.700 --> 00:11:55.899
layer of fluffy, fine wax on it.
00:11:55.899 --> 00:11:56.220
It's
00:11:56.380 --> 00:11:57.740
it's delicious actually.
00:11:57.740 --> 00:11:59.180
It's a different taste
00:11:59.060 --> 00:12:00.500
I've never thought about doing that.
00:12:00.500 --> 00:12:01.860
I always skim it off.
00:12:01.860 --> 00:12:01.940
And
00:12:02.180 --> 00:12:02.900
do what?
00:12:03.140 --> 00:12:09.860
Strain it, and then you get about two tablespoons of wax out of it, and then you put that in your wax bucket and in fifty years
00:12:10.020 --> 00:12:12.100
you got a whole bucket of wax cappings.
00:12:12.100 --> 00:12:12.900
That's a long-term
00:12:13.220 --> 00:12:13.700
plan.
00:12:13.740 --> 00:12:17.340
You mentioned something a bit ago that flashed me back to an old memory.
00:12:17.340 --> 00:12:17.420
I
00:12:17.580 --> 00:12:21.340
I used to give a lot of TV and radio interviews and whatever.
00:12:21.340 --> 00:12:22.460
Not that I was important.
00:12:22.460 --> 00:12:26.140
I was just I was the representative here in Ohio.
00:12:26.040 --> 00:12:34.120
And I was interviewed by a a reporter from the Cleveland Plain Dealer, and I was explaining all this as though he was an accomplished beekeeper.
00:12:34.040 --> 00:12:37.640
And I mentioned the fact that these cappings and parts of propolis
00:12:37.800 --> 00:12:39.080
rise to the top, and I said, it
00:12:39.240 --> 00:12:41.160
you know, it looks like scum.
00:12:41.160 --> 00:12:42.279
You just break it off
00:12:42.440 --> 00:12:42.760
and
00:12:43.140 --> 00:12:43.460
And it
00:12:43.700 --> 00:12:44.740
everything's fine.
00:12:44.740 --> 00:12:44.980
Well
00:12:45.380 --> 00:12:46.660
of course the guy used the word
00:12:46.820 --> 00:12:52.340
scum, scum, scum throughout the article, and I just cringed every time I read that because
00:12:52.660 --> 00:12:55.620
I just used that one time to give him a visual
00:12:56.020 --> 00:12:56.580
analogy
00:12:56.900 --> 00:12:58.980
so when you're talking to people about bees
00:12:59.140 --> 00:13:00.580
who are not beekeepers—
00:13:00.820 --> 00:13:02.500
don't use words like
00:13:02.740 --> 00:13:03.300
scum
00:13:04.260 --> 00:13:06.180
and junk honey I used the word
00:13:06.340 --> 00:13:07.940
junk honey one time
00:13:08.160 --> 00:13:10.160
And that became the guy's go-to
00:13:10.400 --> 00:13:15.600
information source for what we were going to be talking about was junk honey and what we did with it.
00:13:15.600 --> 00:13:17.440
All right, I'm off the subject
00:13:17.620 --> 00:13:21.300
All right, Anne, how do you keep those small extractors tied
00:13:21.459 --> 00:13:21.779
down?
00:13:21.779 --> 00:13:24.180
They're always like trying to ride a bronco
00:13:24.500 --> 00:13:25.860
in a small room.
00:13:29.400 --> 00:13:30.760
For years, probably
00:13:30.920 --> 00:13:31.240
twenty
00:13:31.400 --> 00:13:35.080
years or more, he had been just shoving it into the corner.
00:13:35.080 --> 00:13:36.600
You know, so he had it with
00:13:36.839 --> 00:13:37.160
straight
00:13:37.319 --> 00:13:41.480
legs not flaring out and he would just push it into a corner
00:13:41.639 --> 00:13:42.040
and like
00:13:42.279 --> 00:13:44.519
lean his hip against it while he cranked it.
00:13:44.519 --> 00:13:46.360
It was on the top the crank.
00:13:46.360 --> 00:13:47.240
But that's
00:13:47.440 --> 00:13:50.480
Other people they tell all their children to sit down al
00:13:50.640 --> 00:13:54.640
along the bottom parts and cling to the legs and things like that.
00:13:54.640 --> 00:13:54.880
But
00:13:55.040 --> 00:13:56.880
early on I learned that
00:13:57.120 --> 00:13:57.200
you
00:13:57.360 --> 00:13:57.760
gotta
00:13:58.320 --> 00:14:00.080
put some chains or uh
00:14:00.620 --> 00:14:01.820
you know, something
00:14:02.140 --> 00:14:04.060
that comes straight down from the
00:14:04.220 --> 00:14:04.380
uh
00:14:04.620 --> 00:14:08.459
top edge and anchor it to the floor anchor it to a
00:14:08.940 --> 00:14:10.780
big piece of plywood and your
00:14:11.100 --> 00:14:14.620
extractors on that, you're standing on that, that's a lot of weight.
00:14:14.620 --> 00:14:19.100
If it still moves around, you could put some weights on it, like buckets of water.
00:14:19.100 --> 00:14:19.900
It's just
00:14:20.120 --> 00:14:24.760
you know, if it's not balanced just right, it's gonna wanna move around and you
00:14:24.920 --> 00:14:25.399
gotta
00:14:25.560 --> 00:14:27.399
hold it down somehow.
00:14:27.399 --> 00:14:29.560
Probably not by asking all your children
00:14:29.720 --> 00:14:31.800
or bringing in all the pets.
00:14:31.660 --> 00:14:31.980
You know,
00:14:32.140 --> 00:14:35.260
there's more modern ways of holding something down.
00:14:35.260 --> 00:14:37.580
I almost couldn't believe it until I saw it.
00:14:37.580 --> 00:14:42.380
Someone in my beekeeping club made a stand that was on three wheels.
00:14:42.500 --> 00:14:42.819
And
00:14:42.980 --> 00:14:44.740
it just rolls free.
00:14:45.060 --> 00:14:47.699
And so the extractor kind of does this little
00:14:47.860 --> 00:14:51.699
circular wiggle on the wheels, three wheels.
00:14:51.820 --> 00:14:52.780
as it's going
00:14:52.940 --> 00:14:54.620
and everything is fine.
00:14:54.620 --> 00:15:01.980
It's like you're kind of going with the flow. It wants to do a little wiggle, and you're letting it do it, not resisting the wiggle.
00:15:01.980 --> 00:15:04.460
It's crazy, but it works.
00:15:04.060 --> 00:15:06.300
So it's not restrained to the wall at all.
00:15:06.460 --> 00:15:08.860
It can go across the room if it chose to.
00:15:08.860 --> 00:15:10.620
No, it doesn't go across the room.
00:15:10.620 --> 00:15:12.380
It just does a little kind of a
00:15:12.540 --> 00:15:16.700
tiny circular dance in place on its wheels.
00:15:16.700 --> 00:15:17.180
Okay, I
00:15:17.420 --> 00:15:18.700
I thought it would over time
00:15:18.940 --> 00:15:19.660
move.
00:15:19.660 --> 00:15:22.459
Admittedly he only showed me fifteen seconds of video, but
00:15:22.779 --> 00:15:23.580
Well that's fine.
00:15:23.580 --> 00:15:24.220
I'll take it.
00:15:24.220 --> 00:15:27.740
It sounds like a good idea if you're able to build such a thing.
00:15:27.540 --> 00:15:27.779
It's
00:15:27.940 --> 00:15:28.100
uh
00:15:28.260 --> 00:15:30.740
it's a crazy idea, but it just might work.
00:15:30.740 --> 00:15:30.899
I
00:15:31.140 --> 00:15:33.140
worked out a system myself
00:15:33.620 --> 00:15:37.459
that I can't recommend for anybody else because I happen to have the gadget.
00:15:37.459 --> 00:15:38.100
I've got a
00:15:38.260 --> 00:15:42.260
a small trailer that goes behind my small tractor.
00:15:42.320 --> 00:15:45.520
And ironically, it has springs on it.
00:15:45.520 --> 00:15:45.760
So
00:15:46.000 --> 00:15:49.440
I would bring that trailer into my shop and then I would ratchet
00:15:49.600 --> 00:15:50.160
strap
00:15:50.400 --> 00:15:53.120
my extractor to the trailer.
00:15:53.220 --> 00:15:58.420
And then the springs would absorb a lot of the vibration as the thing bounced around.
00:15:58.420 --> 00:15:58.740
Kinda the
00:15:58.900 --> 00:15:59.460
kind of a
00:15:59.620 --> 00:16:00.820
same idea.
00:16:00.820 --> 00:16:02.980
It's basically the same idea.
00:16:02.980 --> 00:16:06.500
I just happened to have an old trailer that actually had light springs
00:16:06.660 --> 00:16:07.860
on it.
00:16:07.700 --> 00:16:07.940
So
00:16:08.100 --> 00:16:14.339
I could have put four extractors on it; I just had one, so my extracting room was mostly
00:16:14.500 --> 00:16:16.740
dirty trailer from outside.
00:16:22.040 --> 00:16:24.680
We've started to do that here, and it's an
00:16:24.839 --> 00:16:31.160
it's an idea for not just buying a larger extractor when your operation gets bigger.
00:16:31.160 --> 00:16:32.040
You can just
00:16:32.360 --> 00:16:32.600
Like
00:16:32.760 --> 00:16:36.760
say you had a four-frame or a six-frame and you got
00:16:37.400 --> 00:16:39.960
to be too big just to deal with that.
00:16:40.120 --> 00:16:41.800
Like why not just have
00:16:41.960 --> 00:16:42.760
another
00:16:43.400 --> 00:16:46.920
six-frame motorized extractor next to you and you know you
00:16:47.560 --> 00:16:48.120
essentially
00:16:48.280 --> 00:16:51.320
you're filling up something with twelve frames and turning it on
00:16:51.480 --> 00:16:51.720
or
00:16:51.880 --> 00:16:55.720
maybe they could be offset in time so there's just a constant
00:16:55.959 --> 00:16:58.920
You know, that one's running while this one stopped and you unloaded it.
00:16:58.920 --> 00:16:59.320
It's a
00:16:59.560 --> 00:17:00.279
just these
00:17:00.600 --> 00:17:01.080
ideas
00:17:01.320 --> 00:17:04.040
of thinking of a different way to do things.
00:17:04.040 --> 00:17:07.319
You know, without resorting to bicycle parts, Jim.
00:17:07.319 --> 00:17:08.199
Right.
00:17:08.860 --> 00:17:09.659
Well ironically
00:17:09.980 --> 00:17:10.220
I can
00:17:10.380 --> 00:17:10.779
comfortably
00:17:10.939 --> 00:17:11.579
say this.
00:17:11.579 --> 00:17:13.260
There is no standard way.
00:17:13.260 --> 00:17:15.899
It's one of the ways in beekeeping that a beekeeper
00:17:16.059 --> 00:17:17.260
can really express
00:17:22.520 --> 00:17:23.720
Oh yeah, you can make comb
00:17:23.880 --> 00:17:24.920
honey or m other people
00:17:25.080 --> 00:17:26.280
who don't want
00:17:26.440 --> 00:17:27.000
to invest
00:17:27.160 --> 00:17:30.520
in an extractor and they don't know about beekeeping clubs, they
00:17:30.740 --> 00:17:36.820
They actually, can you believe it, scrape the comb off of the frame every time they want, honey?
00:17:36.820 --> 00:17:37.220
And they
00:17:37.540 --> 00:17:38.660
you know, of course you know it
00:17:38.940 --> 00:17:40.299
crush and strain.
00:17:40.299 --> 00:17:43.500
I hate when people tell me they do crush and strain.
00:17:43.500 --> 00:17:46.940
All that wax the bees made, it's just, you know
00:17:47.440 --> 00:17:50.960
each year, but they are getting the freshest, most amazing color
00:17:51.120 --> 00:17:51.519
wax.
00:17:51.519 --> 00:17:54.000
I hope they make some candles out of it, but
00:17:54.240 --> 00:17:55.039
I kind of
00:17:55.279 --> 00:17:55.600
uh
00:17:55.919 --> 00:17:57.360
just cringe when I hear
00:17:57.519 --> 00:17:58.000
crush and
00:17:58.240 --> 00:17:58.880
strain.
00:17:58.880 --> 00:17:59.679
It's the twenty-first
00:18:00.000 --> 00:18:00.399
century
00:18:00.559 --> 00:18:01.200
folks
00:18:12.640 --> 00:18:14.080
that was capped honey
00:18:14.240 --> 00:18:17.840
and it was just too much to put into frames
00:18:18.000 --> 00:18:19.200
and I wanted to
00:18:19.520 --> 00:18:22.240
minimize what was put into the frames for the
00:18:22.540 --> 00:18:26.780
colony I kept so I just did the brood comb and some honey.
00:18:26.780 --> 00:18:27.980
This would be excess.
00:18:27.980 --> 00:18:30.460
I would crush it in a colander
00:18:31.100 --> 00:18:35.180
and just keep mashing it like with a potato masher or something.
00:18:34.940 --> 00:18:39.580
you know, these are slabs of comb that were cut out of a wall or something like that.
00:18:39.580 --> 00:18:44.059
It's not hard to crush it if it's only one year, you know, a few months
00:18:44.220 --> 00:18:44.539
really
00:18:44.860 --> 00:18:45.740
old.
00:18:45.740 --> 00:18:47.659
It's very easy.
00:18:47.240 --> 00:18:49.080
That's another way to do it.
00:18:49.080 --> 00:18:49.320
And
00:18:49.560 --> 00:18:50.920
years ago there was a
00:18:51.080 --> 00:18:51.640
a uh
00:18:51.880 --> 00:18:53.160
wax press
00:18:53.400 --> 00:18:55.400
that was sold by the companies and you was
00:18:55.640 --> 00:18:57.480
it looked like a fruit press.
00:18:57.000 --> 00:18:57.080
Oh
00:18:57.240 --> 00:18:57.400
like
00:18:57.560 --> 00:18:58.360
yeah, like a cider
00:18:58.520 --> 00:18:59.240
press, yeah.
00:18:59.240 --> 00:19:00.520
We got one of those too.
00:19:00.520 --> 00:19:02.280
It's a very shiny modern one.
00:19:02.280 --> 00:19:03.560
Those are cool.
00:19:03.560 --> 00:19:05.080
I wonder if you could use that to
00:19:05.240 --> 00:19:07.000
to squeeze honey out of comb.
00:19:07.000 --> 00:19:09.160
Oh yeah, yeah, definitely.
00:19:08.840 --> 00:19:11.400
It's again though, it's kind of a shame.
00:19:11.400 --> 00:19:14.360
It's uh like a modern version
00:19:14.520 --> 00:19:15.000
of uh
00:19:15.240 --> 00:19:16.200
the old cider
00:19:16.360 --> 00:19:19.160
press kind of thing that a family would have.
00:19:19.160 --> 00:19:21.560
Anne, I'm so sorry, but I have to be the timekeeper
00:19:21.720 --> 00:19:23.320
here and our time is up.
00:19:23.320 --> 00:19:26.120
We could keep on going, but basically
00:19:26.440 --> 00:19:33.960
I've decided that there's no standard way. You do whatever's creative and clever for your individual operation and be prepared to change
00:19:34.240 --> 00:19:36.320
When something better comes along.
00:19:36.400 --> 00:19:38.320
Definitely keep things clean.
00:19:38.320 --> 00:19:42.240
Don't say hey this is a natural product and let things get all dirty.
00:19:42.480 --> 00:19:43.040
So uh
00:19:43.200 --> 00:19:46.640
yeah, I think we've covered a lot of uh points here.
00:19:46.640 --> 00:19:48.720
If you say we have to stop, we have to
00:19:50.040 --> 00:19:50.680
Say bye,
00:19:50.840 --> 00:19:51.400
Anne.
00:19:51.400 --> 00:19:51.640
Bye,
00:19:51.800 --> 00:19:52.360
Anne.
00:19:52.360 --> 00:19:53.400
All right, I'm saying
00:19:53.560 --> 00:19:54.520
bye, listeners.
00:19:54.520 --> 00:19:54.680
Bye,
00:19:54.840 --> 00:19:55.480
listeners.
00:19:55.480 --> 00:19:55.720
Bye,
00:19:55.880 --> 00:20:01.240
Jim.
