Chapter 16

Getting Ready for the Golden Harvest

IN THIS CHAPTER

Deciding what kind of honey you want

Selecting the best tools for the job

Planning your workspace

Packaging and marketing your honey

Typically, it all comes down to honey. That’s why most people keep bees. For eons honey has been highly regarded as a valuable commodity. And why not? No purer food exists in the world. It’s easily digestible, a powerful source of energy, and simply delicious. In many countries, honey even is used for its medicinal properties. The honey bee is the only insect that manufactures a food we eat. And we eat a lot of it — more than 1 million tons are consumed worldwide each year.

What a thrill it is to bottle your first harvest! You’ll swear that you’ve never had honey that tastes as good as your own. And you’re probably right. Commercial honey can’t compare to homegrown. Most supermarket honey has been cooked and ultrafiltered. And while these processes make the product more visually attractive for commercial sale, it diminishes the flavor and nutritional qualities of the product. And alas, some commercial honey isn’t even pure honey, having been blended with less-expensive sweeteners to increase profits. Yours will be just the way the bees made it — pure, natural, and packed with aroma and flavor. I’m getting hungry just thinking about it.

There is so much to say about honey, and Chapter 15 is devoted exclusively to this topic.

In this chapter, I help you plan for the big day — your first honey harvest. You need to consider the type of honey you want to produce, the tools you need, the amount of preparation to do, and what you need for marketing. So, time to get started.

Having Realistic Expectations

In your first year, don’t expect too much of a honey harvest from your Langstroth hive. Sorry, but a newly established colony doesn’t have the benefit of a full season of foraging. Nor has it had an opportunity to build its maximum population. I know that’s disappointing news. But be patient. Next year will be a bonanza!

Beekeeping is like farming. The actual yield depends on the weather. Many warm, sunny days with ample rain result in more flowers and greater nectar flows. When gardens flourish, so do bees. If Mother Nature works in your favor, a single hive can produce 40 to 70 or more pounds of surplus honey (that’s the honey you can take from the bees). If you live in a warm climate (like Florida or Southern California), you can expect multiple harvests each year. But remember that your bees need you to leave some honey for their own use. In cold climates, leave them 60 pounds; in climates with no cold season, leave 20 to 30 pounds.

If you’re planning to harvest from a Top Bar hive, be aware that these hives are simply not geared for large-scale honey production. That’s not to say that you can’t get a small harvest to share with family and friends year after year. The good news is that the harvesting using a Top Bar hive is all low-tech, and there’s no heavy lifting. At the end of this chapter, I include some Top Bar harvesting techniques.

What Flavor Do You Want?

The flavor of honey your bees make is more up to the bees than you. You certainly can’t tell them which flowers to visit. See Chapter 3 for a discussion of where to locate your hive when you want a particular flavor of honey, and see Chapter 15 for a description of the characteristics and flavors of more than 20 domestic and international varietals of honey.

Unless you put your hives on a farm with acres of a single kind of flowering crop, your bees will collect a myriad of nectars from many different floral sources. This results in a delicious honey that’s a blend of the many flowers in your area. Your honey can be classified as wildflower honey. Note also that eating local honey is an effective way to fend off local pollen allergies — a natural way of inoculating yourself. See Chapter 15 for more information on different kinds of honey.

You need to decide what style of honey you want to package, because that influences some of the equipment that you use. The names of the different styles of honey include extracted, comb, chunk, or whipped. These are reviewed in detail in Chapter 15. Of these, the most popular styles are extracted and comb, so this chapter focuses on these two in particular. Extracted is the easiest of these two for the new backyard beekeeper, and that’s where I suggest you start. Instant gratification! After you get the first season under your belt, by all means try your hand at comb honey and the other styles.

Assembling the Right Equipment to Extract Honey

When you decide what style of honey you want to harvest, you need to get the appropriate kind of equipment. This section discusses what you will need to extract honey.

Honey extractors

I suggest that those with Langstroth hives start with extracted honey. For this, you need an extractor, a device that spins honey from the comb using centrifugal force (see Figure 16-1). Extractors come in different sizes and styles to meet virtually every need and budget. Hand-crank models or ones with electric motors are available. Small ones for the hobbyist with a few hives, huge ones for the bee baron with many hives, and everything in between can be found. Budget extractors are made entirely of plastic, while rugged ones are fabricated from food-grade stainless steel. Keep in mind, however, that a good-quality, stainless-steel extractor will far outlast a cheap one made of plastic. So get the best one that your budget allows. Look for a model that accommodates at least four frames at a time. Backyard beekeepers can expect to pay hundreds of dollars for a new, quality extractor. A used one costs less. Add on more dollars for ones with electric motors.

You may not have to buy an extractor. Some local beekeepers, beekeeping clubs, and nature centers rent out extractors. So be sure to call around and see what options you have. Some beekeepers will extract your honey for you. Ultimately, you may want to invest in your own extractor. My advice: If you can, rent or borrow an extractor during your first season. From the experience you gain, you’ll be better able to choose the model and style of extractor that best meets your needs and budget.

Courtesy of Howland Blackiston

FIGURE 16-1: This hand-crank, stainless-steel extractor extracts up to six shallow frames at a time.

Uncapping knife

The wax cappings on the honeycomb form an airtight seal on the cells containing honey — like a lid on a jar. Before honey can be extracted, the “wax lids” must be removed. The easiest way is by using an electrically heated uncapping knife. These heated knives slice quickly and cleanly through the cappings (see Figure 16-2).

Courtesy of Howland Blackiston

FIGURE 16-2: An electrically heated uncapping knife makes short order of slicing wax cappings off honeycomb.

Alternatively, you can use a less-costly serrated knife called a cold uncapping knife. Heat it by dipping in hot water (be sure to wipe the knife dry before you use it to prevent any water from getting into your honey).

Honey strainer

The extracted honey needs to be strained before you bottle it. This step removes the little bits of wax, wood, and the occasional sticky bee. Any kind of conventional kitchen strainer or fine-sieved colander will suffice. Nice stainless-steel honey strainers (see Figure 16-3) are made just for this purpose and are available from your beekeeping supplier.

Courtesy of Howland Blackiston

FIGURE 16-3: A double stainless-steel honey strainer (like this one) is an effective way to clean up your honey before bottling it.

Or you can use a disposable cloth paint strainer (available at your local paint supply store). It does the trick just fine and fits nicely over a five-gallon, food-grade plastic bucket.

Other handy gadgets for extracting honey

Here are a few of the optional items that are available for extracting honey. None are essential, but all are useful niceties.

Double uncapping tank

The double uncapping tank is a nifty device that is used to collect the wax cappings as you slice them off the comb. The upper tank captures the cappings (this wax eventually can be rendered into candles, furniture polish, cosmetics, and so on). The tank below is typically separated by a wire rack and collects the honey that slowly drips off the cappings. Some say the sweetest honey comes from the cappings! The model shown in Figure 16-4 also has a honey valve in the lower tank.

See the special coupon at the end of this book from The Hive Butler for a special deal on an uncapping tank.

Courtesy of Howland Blackiston

FIGURE 16-4: A double uncapping tank helps you harvest wax cappings. It reclaims the honey that drains from the cappings.

Uncapping fork or roller

An uncapping fork (sometimes called a cappings scratcher) or an uncapping roller is used to scratch or punch open cappings on the honeycomb (see Figure 16-5). It can be used in place of or as a supplement to an uncapping knife (the fork opens stubborn cells missed by the knife or uncapping roller) but the wax removal is messier.

Courtesy of Howland Blackiston

FIGURE 16-5: An uncapping fork or roller is a useful tool for opening cappings missed by your uncapping knife.

Bottling bucket

Five-gallon bottling buckets are made with food-grade plastic and include a honey gate at the bottom. They come with airtight lids and are handy for storing and bottling honey. Each pail holds nearly 60 pounds of honey. I always keep a few of them on hand (see Figure 16-6).

Courtesy of Howland Blackiston

FIGURE 16-6: The honey gate valve at the bottom of this five-gallon bucket makes bottling your honey a breeze.

Solar wax melter

Aside from honey, one of the most important products of the hive is beeswax. From the wax, you can make candles, furniture polish, and cosmetics. Your primary harvest of wax is the result of the cappings that you cut from the comb during the honey extraction process. These cappings (and any burr comb that you trim from the hive during the year) can be placed in a solar wax melter and melted. A single hive yields enough surplus wax to make a few candles and some other wax products.

Find recipes for making products from beeswax in Chapter 18.

You can obtain a solar wax melter by purchasing it from your bee supplier or by making one yourself. It typically consists of a wooden box containing a metal pan covered with a glass lid (see Figure 16-7). The sun melts the wax, which is collected in a tray at the base of the unit. It’s a handy piece of equipment if you plan to make use of all that wax.

Courtesy of Brushy Mountain Bee Farm

FIGURE 16-7: You can use a solar wax melter to begin the rendering process. Very green!

Find instructions for making your own solar wax melter in my book Building Beehives For Dummies (Wiley).

Honey containers

Select an attractive package for your extracted honey (jar, bottle, and so on). Many options are available, but quite frankly, any kind of container will do. Clear containers are best because customers want to be able to see what they’re getting. Either plastic or glass is okay to use. You can purchase all kinds of specialized honey bottles from your beekeeping supplier. Or simply recycle old mayonnaise and jam jars that you’ve been hoarding. The key is to keep the jar air-tight. Honey is hygroscopic, meaning it attracts moisture from the air. Without an airtight seal, the additional water content will eventually cause the honey to ferment and spoil.

Planning Your Extracted Honey Harvest Setup

Giving some thought to where you plan to extract and bottle your honey is important. You can use your basement, garage, tool shed, or even your kitchen. You don’t need a big area. If you have only a few hives, harvesting is a one-person job. But be prepared — you’ll likely get plenty of volunteers who want to help out. The kids in my neighborhood are eager to lend a hand in exchange for a taste of my liquid candy. The guidelines in the following list will help you choose the best location:

• The space you choose must be absolutely bee-tight. That is to say, you don’t want any bees getting into the space where you’re working. The smell of all that honey will attract them, and the last thing you want is hundreds (or thousands) of ravenous bees flying all about.

• Never, ever attempt to harvest your honey outdoors. If you do, disaster is imminent! In short order you’ll be engulfed by thousands of bees, drawn by the honey’s sweet smell.

• Set up everything in advance, and arrange your equipment in a way that complements the sequential order of the extraction process (see Figure 16-8).
• Have a bucket of warm water — better yet, hot and cold running water — and a towel at the ready. Life gets sticky when you’re harvesting honey, and the water is a welcome means for rinsing off your hands, uncapping knife, and dealing with unintended spills.
• If you’re using an electric uncapping knife, you’ll need an electrical outlet. But remember that water and electricity don’t mix well, so be careful!
• Place newspapers or a painter’s drop cloth on the floor. This little step saves time during cleanup. If your floor is washable, that really makes life easy!

Courtesy of Howland Blackiston

FIGURE 16-8: Here’s the setup, left to right, in my garage for extracting honey.

Gathering Comb Honey Equipment

Harvesting comb honey boils down to two basic equipment choices: using section comb cartridges or the cut-comb method. Either works fine. You need special equipment on your Langstroth hives to produce these special kinds of honey. See Chapter 15 for additional information about comb honey production.

Section comb cartridges

Honeycomb kits for Langstroth hives consist of special supers containing wooden or plastic section comb cartridges. Each cartridge contains an ultrathin sheet of wax foundation. Using them enables the bees to store honey in the package that ultimately is used to market the honeycomb. My favorite kit — Ross Rounds — makes circular section comb in clear plastic containers. This is a product with enormous eye appeal!

You typically need a very strong nectar flow to encourage the bees to make any kind of section comb honey. For this reason, making comb honey is more challenging than the more traditional extracted honey. You may want to defer this adventure for the second year of your backyard beekeeping.

Cut comb

The cut-comb method can be used with either Langstroth or Top Bar hives. In the case of Langstroth hives, a special foundation that is ultrathin and unwired is used in the frames. After bees fill the combs with capped honey, the combs are cut from the frames or top bars. You can use a conventional kitchen knife or a comb honey cutter, which looks like a square cookie cutter and makes the job easy and the resulting portion uniform and attractive. It’s important to freeze all cut-comb sections for at least 48 hours to kill any wax moth eggs.

In a Top Bar hive, the comb is all natural but older comb will become hard and unappealing and should never be used as cut comb. It’s always best to use new honey comb drawn in the same season as the harvest. Any comb formally used for brood rearing is never acceptable as cut comb.

Branding and Selling Your Honey

Before you harvest your first crop of honey, you may want to give some advanced thought to the label you will put on it. You may even want to sell your honey. After all, a hundred or more bottles of honey may accommodate more toast than your family can eat! The following sections describe some ideas to help you think this through.

Creating an attractive label

An attractive label can greatly enhance the appearance and salability of your honey. It also includes important information about the type of honey and who packages it (you!). Generic labels are available from your beekeeping supplier. Or you can make your own custom label. I easily reproduce my labels (see Figure 16-9) using my computer’s printer and an appropriate size of blank, self-adhesive labels.

Courtesy of Howland Blackiston

FIGURE 16-9: Here’s my honey label — simple and to the point.

The guidelines and requirements for proper honey labeling have been changing in recent years. There are all kinds of new do’s and don’ts that should be considered if you plan to sell your honey commercially. For the latest and official info, contact the National Honey Board, 390 Lashley St., Longmont, CO 80501-6045. Its web address is www.nhb.org.

You should include a few important bits of information on your label (particularly if you’re planning to sell your honey). The following are suggestions for you to consider:

• State what the container contains. The word honey must be visible and the most prominent word on the label. The name of a plant or blossom may be used if it’s the primary floral source. Honey should be labeled with its common or usual name on the front of your package, such as “Honey,” “Wildflower Honey,” or “Clover Honey.”
• Include your name and contact information (as the producer). Consumers should be able to get in touch with you.
• Report the net weight of your product (excluding packaging), both in pounds/ounces and in metric weight (grams). This information should be included in the lower third of your front label panel in easy-to-read type. When determining net weight, use the government conversion factor of 1 ounce (oz) = 28.3495 grams or 1 pound (lb) = 453.592 grams. Round after making the calculation, not before. Use no more than three digits after the decimal point on the package. You may round down the final weight to avoid overstating the contents. When rounding, use typical mathematical rounding rules.

I recommend including information about the nutritional value (not usually required by law if you are producing fewer than 100,000 units per year or producing honey as a small company of fewer than 100 employees). But I think including this information makes the product far more professional looking. For more on the proper wording and design of a nutritional information label, see Figure 16-10.

In addition, consider the use of descriptive words and phrases, such as:

• Natural: The word natural on the label can add value to the product in the eyes of many consumers. The Food and Drug Administration has a specific position on natural: nothing artificial or synthetic has been included or added that consumers would not expect to be in honey.
• Kosher: The Hebrew word kosher means proper or fit. Kosher food must meet all the requirements of kosher dietary laws. To produce a kosher product, there are two areas of concern: raw materials, and equipment and production. Whereas honey in the hive is intrinsically kosher, it still needs to be certified because of processing. For products to be acceptable as kosher, they have to be certified by a recognized rabbinical authority whose approval is shown through recognized symbols on the label.
• Honey and infants statement: Although it’s not required by law, many honey companies voluntarily add a statement on the honey label that says “Do not feed honey to infants under 12 months of age,” or something similar. The reason for this is because honey may occasionally contain botulinum spores and has been identified as a risk factor for infant botulism.

Go to your local market and make mental notes about commercial honey labels. Which ones appeal to you? What about them makes them look so attractive? What kind of image or graphic is used? Which colors look best? Borrow ideas shamelessly from the ones you like best — but be careful not to steal anything that may be trademarked!

Courtesy of Howland Blackiston

FIGURE 16-10: These are the standard layouts and nutritional information that can appear on your label. Information in this example is based on a one-pound jar of honey.

More detailed information about creating a distinctive label is available from the National Honey Board (see its contact info earlier in this section).

Finding places to market your honey

An independently owned food market in your neighborhood may be interested in selling your honey. Honey is a pure and natural food, and you don’t need a license to package and sell it as a backyard beekeeper (more detailed information is available from the National Honey Board; see the contact information in the previous section). Here are some other ideas:

• Check out health food stores. They’re always looking for a source of fresh, local honey.
• Gift stores, craft shops, and boutiques are good places to sell local honey.
• Put up an attractive sign in front of your house: HONEY FOR SALE (but check first to see if this is allowed in your community or if it might affect your insurance coverage).
• Sell your honey at the local farmers’ market or sell to a vendor at a market who would be interested in offering your honey.
• Don’t forget to consider church fairs, synagogue bazaars, gardening centers, and even your place of work. Seasonal fairs especially prior to the holidays can be highly profitable.
• And by all means give a bottle to all your immediate neighbors. It’s the right thing to do and a great public relations gesture.

Selling your honey on the web

Why not set up a website or use social media to promote and sell your honey all over the world? Remember that plastic honey jars are lighter to ship and less fragile than glass. Now’s the time to put on your best creative thinking cap and whip up an eye-catching website that will have visitors buzzing with excitement.