Harvesting & Processing Equipment

Excess honey is a sign of a good year — enough rain to keep the flowers blooming, but not too much to keep the bees from flying. There are several methods to harvest and uncap frames and extract, filter, and bottle honey. Don't let the excess wax go to waste, either: process the you've collected for candle-making or adding wax to foundation. Consider these recommended honey harvest tools and equipment to keep on-hand.

• When harvesting honey, select from the three main tools that help gently remove the bees: a bee brush, an escape board, or a fume board. A bee brush lets you gently sweep bees out of the way. An escape board is a “door” you place on the hive — when the bees leave the honey super, they can't find their way back — and clears all bees out in about 24 hours. A fume board is lined with a bee-repellent-sprayed cloth inset; the bees hate the smell of the repellent so they leave the honey super within minutes.
• Use uncapping tools to remove the thin beeswax covering off your honey frames to expose your honey. It is important to minimize damage to the frames when uncapping — you can reuse the drawn comb to give your bees a head start on refilling the box. Cappings — the layer of wax that you scrape or cut off your honey frames — contain quite a bit of honey! Strain the honey from the cappings and add it to your harvest, then rinse the strained beeswax and save it in your refrigerator or freezer to melt into beeswax cakes later.
• If you have more than a few frames to harvest, using centrifugal force with a honey extractor is the fastest method of extracting honey. Beekeeping clubs often have harvesting and extracting parties or offer an extracting kit loans, and we carry honey extracting equipment for every budget. Some equipment can be upgraded as your honey operation grows.
• You’ll get more than just honey during uncapping and extracting: Beeswax, propolis, and even a couple of bee parts need to be strained or filtered out. We use two-stage filters or cheesecloth over a larger gauged sieve, which still allows much of the pollen to pass through.
• Once your honey is strained, you're ready to bottle. The easiest way for the beginner to bottle is to use a plastic bucket with a honey gate at the bottom. Using gravity, you can easily fill honey containers to sell, give away, or keep. As your honey sales grow, upgrade to a bottling tank and an automatic filler.

Explore our Beekeeping Resource Center for tutorials, tips, and information about honey harvesting, the best tools and equipment, and recommended bottling processes.