Bees - honey

I'll cover frames more in the Beekeeping Equipment section. The hives most beekeepers use today consist of brood bodies with frames and supers with frames. 

The brood bodies contain the queen, eggs, larvae, honey and the new bees. The supers contain the honey only. The queen is separated from the supers by a 'queen excluder'. So the queen can't lay eggs in the supers, so all you get is honey!

There are several ways to extract honey. I cut the wax caps off the frame that hold the honey in place.

Once the caps are cut off I place the frames into a centrifuge and spin the frames.

The honey is forced out of the frames onto the side wall of the centrifuge where it runs down and is tapped off.

As the honey is tapped off from the centrifuge, it's filtered through a three stage metal mesh filter.

As it drips through the filters, air bubbles are formed so it has to be left to stand for a short while to settle before the raw, unfiltered honey can be put into jars.

The wax cappings and damaged wax from the frames are saved to make candles and other wax based products.