Micro Honey Harvester - From Frame to Jar in Minutes - Raw Honey With NO Mess!

Not everyone wants to extract tons and tons of honey. Sometimes a small amount is best. I am here with the Micro Honey Harvester from Hivekeepers, and this really is very, very cool. So Simon is gonna show me exactly how it works. Simon, pleasure to meet you. Let's get to it.

Great to see you. Thanks, Laurence.

So what's the inspiration behind this device?

I've been a beekeeper myself for about 15 years. I know the pain and suffering many of us go through when we think about getting honey from our bees, especially when we are not trying to get huge quantities. So all the effort that we've gone to is from our many years of going through those troubles. This is what we've done.

It looks like nothing else I've ever seen in terms of a honey extractor. It's a micro extractor. In this video, we're going to show you exactly how it works here in Apimondia, and we even have 2 bees as guests. So Simon's going to demonstrate it. Let's get it going.

Sure, here you go, Laurence. This is the Micro Honey Harvester, our small benchtop cordless micro honey harvester, and I'll just open that up in readiness for what I'm going to show you next. So inside here is a small harvesting unit. And we rely on these frames here, or these cassettes, I should say. This is a hivekeeper's frame with our cassettes that are built in there. Here's just one you can see without the actual, any honey in there. You can use this little tool to pop it apart.

Okay.

And you can see, you probably can see there, there's a bit of a structure in the bottom where you can see through.

I can, yeah. I'll just show that up to the camera there. It's quite a different setup, this. So it's a cassette that goes together like that, and then you open it up, and that's the way that you uncap. So we're not uncapping, we're not taking the wax off, is that right?

One of the biggest frustrations I had as I'm trying to produce my own honey, honey was uncapping, and I've tried all the tools. I'm a small beekeeper, but I've tried all the tools. I always found it hard. That was one of the key things I had to find a way around, Lawrence.

Okay.

Should I show you a harvest?

Yeah, let's go for it.

So I'm going to take out this cassette here and show it to you. It's a little bit— looks a little bit different to the one there. Beautiful capped honey, and in here there's about 160 to 170 grams of honey by the time we harvest it properly. I'm just going to push this apart.

Oh wow.

And you can see there some golden, beautiful looking honey ready to harvest. So quite simply, look at this.

Okay, so you're flipping it round. Okay, so that's interesting. So the cassettes are like that, you open them up, and then they go like that in the extractor.

That's right.

Opposite to normal.

Yeah, exactly. We've flipped it around, and when we put the lid on here like this, just secure it like that. I'm going to push that for a moment and watch this wondrous experience.

What I love about this is where's the cable?

No cable.

No cable. So is it chargeable?

Chargeable, take it down to your beehives, have it in the kitchen, take it wherever you want. Honey harvesting can happen anywhere now.

Yeah, that is pretty cool.

I don't get sick of it. I've done a lot of this. I don't ever get sick of looking at this. So that's run for 30 seconds and it's stopped itself. Most of the time you'll get at least 70 or 80% of the honey off the first spin. You do it again and keep getting more.

Yeah, do you know what's so interesting in it? Yeah, I can already hear what people are going to say negatively about this, which is, of course, oh, I want more I want to get a huge extractor. And you know what? Not everyone wants that. This is brilliant because this means that I can take a small amount of honey and just harvest this amount as opposed to all of it.

And, and what I've found amazing in my own beekeeping with this is I can go down and do a beehive inspection and this comes with me now. It's one of my tools I take with me. And it might only be that we have 2 or 3 cassettes that are ready. Obviously, we want to leave plenty of stores for the bees themselves, but I can just harvest enough honey for my family for that week or maybe 2 weeks. Really simple to have a little bit of honey often. Definitely. I'll show you something really nice.

that we'd get in the UK as well. In the UK, we have like huge amounts of different flows. So you could have— this could be your spring flow, this could be maybe some hawthorn, then you move on and you could have lime. Like, each one of these is going to be different honey, isn't it?

I've seen that when I've actually harvested one after the other. You can actually see slightly different colours and almost layering of different honeys.

Oh, I bet. And then if you kind of extrapolate that across a whole hive, if you take all of the frames out of all of the hive and extract it, once you get a homogeneous mix, which can be nice, But with this, like, you're getting just a taste of this and a taste of that.

It's an amazing thought, isn't it?

Oh yeah, I want one of these for my cheeseboard at home.

I think that's what I'm going to buy. That's what people seem to love about this, is the idea you can just have this with friends and show your friends how to harvest. Kids fall over their feet to be the one to push the button.

I bet the— oh my goodness, my daughter's going to love this. I'm getting one of these. Ivy, I'll get one of these for you and bring it home. Right, should we— how do you get the honey out?

Designed to be as simple as we can, so the lid can come off. This is just a simple twist and it's out of the way. I'll move that just for a moment.

This is so much fun. Absolutely love it.

This will slide out. You can probably see what's going to happen next.

Oh, nice.

And we're ready just to, to take that out. Now, it never seems like a lot when you start scooping.

No.

At first, but it builds up pretty quickly.

Yeah.

And as we go to do this— oh, it smells good.

It does.

This is some local Danish honey.

Nice. It's a lovely colour. Wow, there's a, there's a decent amount there. And the thing is, is, you know, it The honey that I produce, we have hundreds of litres and tonnes of it and stuff, but there is a place for stuff like this. We deal with so many people who've got 1 beehive, 2 beehives. They don't want to extract 4 supers at a time because they say, well, I just want a little bit for me, a little bit for my family and my friends.

Exactly.

And it's too much. And you've got to have a full extractor, you've got to have a settling tank, you've got to have a filter, you've got to have the way to get the wax out. Whereas if you just want a little bit of honey for your breakfast, it's quite a cool solution.

You've just done it, haven't you? You've just done it in just a couple of minutes. And do you know what? I mean, obviously I could scrape a bit more out of that, But if we were to go and clean, get the rest out of here and clean it up, 30 seconds and you're clean.

Do you know what I would be doing with this? This would be my routine. Yeah. So I'd get this, I'd get my breakfast out here, I'd have some toast, boiling water, like warm water in there, bit of lemon.

Oh, you could.

Swish it around.

I had never thought of that.

What a nice cup of tea. And it would do. I tell you what, we'll do that today when we get our little shot.

That is exactly what you could do. And that is it. Like, it literally would take you 30 seconds to clean it up.

Yeah, yeah, cool.

These go straight back in the beehive.

Oh, you put them back in like that? So they're just stored at the right temperature in the beehive?

Oh, let me, let me get the cassette we used before. Can you hold that one for me?

Yep.

So obviously the cappings are still there. We never got rid of the cappings.

So I assume, I assume when you put it back in, they're going to remove— they'll remove them now?

They will remove that in the first 24 hours. They are really quick at it.

I wonder what they do with it. Do they— because you see, sometimes they discard it and sometimes they like repurpose it.

I've seen both.

Seen both?

Okay. Yeah, I've certainly seen it pushed out the front of a beehive before, but most of that's rare. So these will just go back together like you saw. We see here with these Yeah, yeah. And then that'll slot back into the frame.

Cool.

And the bees will get straight to work with that pretty quickly.

In terms of getting them drawn out, yeah, what's your feeling when you put it into the hive? Do the bees like this?

Anyone who's worked with plastic before will know that it takes some time for the bees to come around to that.

Yep.

We've found the best way after trying lots of different methods is just to get some hard beeswax and rub it.

Like a beeswax candle or something?

Yeah, and actually be— you can be a bit aggressive with it because actually when there's flakes and bits Yeah. The bees go in there and try to move it around, and that helps encourage them there. Cool. When there's a nectar flow, they're there. Yeah.

Awesome. Okay, so we put these back in, they repurpose the wax and just start all over again.

Exactly.

Should we taste some of the honey?

Let's do it.

This bee— there's a bee right here that is really keen to get to this honey, and I don't know how he's— Stop misgendering all the critters of the world. Or she's got in here, I should say. But she is keen, isn't she?

She's keen.

Right, let's have a taste.

They're probably happy to see the light because they've been put away down there for the night.

So let's get some like that.

Score a sampler. Oh shit.

Wow. Very, very nice honey. Very pure. Let's have a taste. I've tasted a lot of honey since I've been here. You could argue too much honey.

Yeah, let's have a go. I can't help myself.

You've got it, haven't you?

Wow.

It's very fruity.

I was trying to ask the Danish beekeeper who collected that for me. And yeah, all I can say is it's somewhere local to Copenhagen. Mixed flora.

Nice. Well, that's absolutely brilliant. It's come out nice and easy. So this is just coming out of the production stage now. The cassettes and the frames are ready. The honey extract is about a couple of months. Orders are being taken. And if you want to get your hands on one of the first ones in the world, head over to Hivekeepers for the Micro Honey Harvester. This really is very cool.

Spectacular, mate.

Pleasure. Thanks for doing that.