We “pulled the honey” today — very labor intensive, mostly from Bob’s end — You take off the “shallow supers” that are full of frames of honey and VERY heavy. You brush off the bees, and put the frames into cardboard boxes covered with a wet towel to keep the bees from going back on the frames. Then you close the hive back up. Neither of us were stung, eve though we were taking their winter food 🙁 But after a bit they all went back home. They will have plenty (so we are told) to carry them through the winter.
The shallow white and wood colored boxes were full of honey frames until we took them away.
The next step is to rent an extractor and centrifuge the honey out of the frames and then strain it and collect it in big buckets with a lid and a spout at the bottom. We will take a sample to our mentor and supplier to test for moisture content, buy the buckets, the strainer and a scratcher (to get the caps off the honey cells) that looks like a small rake.
We will also buy some bottles for the final step and I also ordered this label for our honey. Look for it in your Christmas stocking 🙂
Boy does that sound like a lot of work. I love the honey in the comb too.