Extract Honey

How do I extract the sugarbag?

It’s a case of prying, pricking, draining and straining. But the first step is to set up a hive of a suitable design. See here (PDF, 167kb) for an image of the Honey hive.

Once the hive is full, I extract the sugarbag by prying off the top box (honey super) to expose the honeycomb. This comb is then pricked and drained into container, filtered, bottled and that’s it, no other processing. If the honey contains a lot of pollen, I let it to stand for a while, allowing the pollen to come to the surface, and then I remove it.

Prying off the sugarbag

Pricking the sugarbag

Draining the sugarbag

Straining the honey