Congratulations, you have successfully taken off supers of capped honey from your bees, and it is time to do your first extraction. 

Set up your uncapping devices be they electric, hot water, steam-heated knives, or other ‘cold’ uncapping implements to do the uncapping of your honey combs. Heated knives cut the cappings off cleanly and with less effort, but some beekeepers have a preference for the process of cold-uncapping, by using unheated knives or uncapping tools to do the job.

There are numerous cold devices that are on the market for beginners, namely a means to scrape, pierce, lift off in the way of multi-pronged scrapers on a handle or on a roller; these do what they claim to do effectively on new combs, but it is a lot harder to use them to remove cappings on older combs where the beeswax becomes tougher. 

The downside of the cold devices is that they introduce lots of wax particles and air bubbles into the honey cells, and they can rip the tops of the honey cells, which makes more work for your bees to repair when those frames are returned to the hive. The aforementioned is very hard to clear from honey, and helps to promote the candying of honey, whereas with heated knives this is not generally an issue.

After you uncap, put the frames into the baskets on your honey extractor; be it a simple 2-frame hand-driven tangential extractor, or even a 12-frame radial- or semi-radial motorised honey extractor. Most of the smaller extractors can also be purchased motorised, or hand driven. What you purchase depends on the number of hives you have, or how many hives you aspire to have in the future.

Regardless, whether hand-operated or motorised, the same practice applies. Start the revolutions slowly and watch the wall of the extractor – you will see the honey that comes out of the combs hitting the inside of the wall of the extractor. 

In a tangential honey extractor (where the frames stand on their ends, and one side of the honeycomb faces the wall of the extractor), you will need to reverse the frames in the baskets part way through the process to ensure honey from both sides of the comb is expelled from the frames. 

Only spin the first side for a minute or so then stop and reverse the combs and spin that side for a little bit longer than you spun the first side, gauge the amount of honey that you see hitting the wall rather than the time spun. Stop and reverse the combs again back to the first side and spin until there are next to no droplets of honey hitting the side wall.

In a radial extractor, where frames also stand on their ends in holders or lugs, the frames are arranged like spokes on a bicycle wheel around the spindle of the extractor. In this instance, you do not need to reverse the frames halfway through the process, or even necessarily reverse the direction of rotation of the spindle during the extracting process.

Don’t be tempted to spin your extractor at top speed, as the centrifugal force that makes the honey throw out of the side of the comb facing the extractor wall also makes the comb on the other side of the mid-rib of the frame push, or ‘bow’, in the direction the droplets of honey are going: outwards. Stop, reverse the frames, then extract the honey that was pushing at the mid-rib or foundation that you embedded in the frame.

If you are using wooden frames, with wired foundation wax, it’s for this reason – bowed foundation – that it’s so important to wire your frames correctly to the right tension, so it can hold the force of the honey being spun out without the movement or ‘bowing’ that slack wiring gives combs. Wiring that is not tight can cause the comb to break out (‘blow out’) of the wires that you embedded your foundation onto because of the centrifugal forces of the honey extractor. 

If you use plastic foundation (either in wooden frames, or as part of full plastic frames and foundation), the problem of ‘blowing out’ of honeycomb will not usually be a problem. 

After you have spun most of the honey out of both sides of the frames, you can speed up the revolutions to dry out the last skerrick of honey. Keep the honey extractor spinning until the frames are no longer wet with honey, but merely sticky.

When you take out the extracted frames you will feel the weight has reduced substantially, and, on looking at the base of the cells, you should see a distinct delineation of the cell structure meaning you have taken nearly all the honey out. You can never take out all the honey because you cannot spend that amount of time doing the extracting, or you would never get the job done. 

Nothing of what honey is left in the honeycomb is wasted, as you return the ‘stickies’ back on the hive for the bees to re-fill, or simply clean out, prior to removing excess supers for winter. When you put frames of ‘stickies’ back on the hive, the bees gather up the honey in the extracted frames, and then start to stack it back into the cells nearest the top bar if they are on a honey flow. 

If you are packing your bees down for winter, or if there are no more honey flows to be worked in your area, then these stickies can be put above an inner cover, or hive mat, made out of vinyl or black builders plastic cut to fit on top of the frames in a box with a 2.5cm gap all around from the inside of the walls. This allows the bees to come up and clean the remaining honey out of the cells, and, because there is a definite division of the lower and upper areas of the hive provided by of the cover, the bees will take the honey below the divider and down to the main hive body. 

In three- or four-days’ time, you can take off the box of dry combs to store away till they are needed again. You are best not to store wet stickies, as honey, being hydroscopic, sucks in moisture from the air. When the moisture content is high enough in the honey residue it can ferment in the combs, which can make alcohol, and alcohol in large enough amounts can kill bees.

*Article by Arthur Garske