'..., Set,...'

All being well, honey harvest begins this week. Equipment preparation today means we can focus on the bees and honey tomorrow. We must fetch frames - bee-free - from the apiary, bring them home in the car (dripping into the boot) to the heated kitchen; honey flows more easily if it is kept warm

We remove the wax caps from all the cells on a frame of honeycomb, using a specially designed sharp-pronged fork that slides under the caps and pulls them off. The bit of wood at the top of the image is the end of a short plank on which we hold the frame, allowing the wax (mixed with some honey) to fall into a bowl below

Each frame is placed on its end into the wire cage in the extractor in the centre of the picture. When there are four ready to go, we turn the handle. The white cover conceals a simple, 90-degree cog gear that allows the turning handle to rotate the cage around its vertical axis. Looking from above, the picture does not show the vertical shaft around which the cage rotates

In other words, the extractor is a simple centrifuge, powered by human muscle. Honey in the cells in the outside of the frames is thrown on to the side walls and runs down to the base of the extractor. Honey in the cells in the inside of the frames, of course, is forced deeper into the cells. This can be dangerous: the mass of the honey and the strength of the centrifugal* force can be enough to distort or severely damage the comb. To avoid that, we first wind quite gently to remove just some of the honey from the outside cells, then flip the frames over to expose the other side, wind hard to empty those cells, then flip the frames back again and wind hard to fully remove the honey our initial, gentle rotation left in place. Four more frames, and do it all again...

Eventually, honey (along with bits of wax, propolis, and the occasional bee leg) builds up in the bottom of the extractor to a height that impedes rotation. We open the tap and run the honey (and bits) into a two-stage stainless-steel strainer. The two parts are on the left and they stack inside one another. The first one has 1500 micron (1.5 mm) mesh, the second 500 micron. Beneath the strainer we put a temporary holding bucket (with a tap we must remember to close!)

Next, we run the twice-strained honey - now containing only a few specks of wax or propolis - through a nylon cloth filter, with a mesh size of 200 microns, into a larger container (tap closed!), capable of holding 40kg of honey. This is the step for which a warm room is essential. Cold honey is very reluctant to flow through a mesh of this size. Also, the honey is likely to contain at least some crystalised fragments that are larger than this mesh size, so the filter is likely to clog. We can scrape away the crystals and let the honey flow of it is warm; it's very hard to make it work if the honey is cold

At that point we stop (except for washing up!) The honey can sit in its tank for a couple of days to let bubbles rise to the surface before we bottle it. So you see, it's easy. All we have to do is make it happen!

*To any physicists reading this: I know there is no such 'real' thing as centrifugal force, but it reads a little smoother than the true mechanics of what is going on