Zayne Extracts Honey for the First Time

Episode 18, Zane's first nuc. We are going to extract all of your honey, Zane.

All? You made that sound like there's a lot of honey to extract.

Loads of honey there. What I've done is I've pre-lined the extractor with a little bit of honey for you, just so we can get some out of the frames.

A bit of a boost, thank you.

Yeah, should we do it? This is fun though, yeah? It's a bit sticky and it's a bit bee-y in here at the moment, isn't it?

A little bit hot.

A little bit hot.

If we can get this done and we'll shoot out, that'll be good.

Right, so your supers are there, Zane. Do you want to grab one of the frames?

Start with the best.

Okay.

Is that the best?

Yeah.

It's all right, innit?

Yeah. You've seen me do it, you don't need any instructions.

Clean knife on the spike, so just kind of flush with it and go down. This is really satisfying, innit?

Really satisfying. Well, that was pretty special, Zane, mate.

That is cool, man. And that's the first— that's my first ever time.

First ever time.

And it's nice that it's my frame from my hive, just That's just proper satisfying, isn't it?

Right, you know what to do next.

Into—

Yep. Yep.

Make sure we save every last little drop. I have a feeling that might have been the best frame out of the lot. Does it get any better than that? That is incredible.

You like it, innit?

Yeah, it's really satisfying.

So that is all of the frames uncapped and in the extractor now. Do you enjoy that, Zane?

Yeah, it was good fun.

How satisfying is that?

Very.

Every time. And I'll tell you what, anyone watching at home, it's not that easy and it's not that satisfying unless you got the, the frame spacing correctly.

I can imagine.

Yeah, see the ones where I uncap a little bit and then there's like bits that you don't get off and you have to go back in with the fork. If you don't space it properly, like, they're all like that.

Yeah.

The whole frame.

Yeah.

And you see how quick it is with a knife versus the fork. So setting them up, get them on castellations, and they come out like that. So I'm going to let you spin, but quickly, what we've got here, this is all the cappings. So all we do with that is we leave them on this tray that's got holes, we smush it up with a knife, all the honey drips through, and then like at the end of the day you just collect everything. You'd be amazed how much honey you get out of that.

I was thinking there's obviously a lot of honey wasted in these cappings.

But you'll retrieve it, and then I use a wax cappings press. We'll chuck whatever's left in the wax cappings press and get some stuff out as well. But I'll leave it to you, Gonzalo. And again, a little bit quicker.

Feels like being back in the 1800s.

Okay, I think that's done, Zane.

Yeah.

Open it up. You see all the honey at the bottom?

Yeah. So I take it it's a case of taking this lid off first, because if we don't do that, the honey's not going to go in there. And then just undo this and open the tap here. Hey, look at that! So take it we're gonna have to filter this as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So that's probably where some of the frames are busted. Yeah, so we'll have to filter it out, but it's fine. All right, if you lean that back up then, Zane, just make sure it doesn't— oh yes, sorry, I should have said that. There we go. That's it, and then close the tap. So we've uncapped all the honey, put it through the extractor, decanted just into a bucket, and then put it through a 600-micron strainer. Now all of that honey has strained into this bucket here, but if you put it in the jar straight away, you'll still get little bits of wax and little bits of air in there, and it doesn't look very nice. So what you need to do is leave it 24 hours, all of the air bubbles filter up to the top, And then you can decant out of the bottom perfectly pure honey. So we'll be back 24 hours' time to finish off this series and get Zane's honey into the jar. So 24 hours later, all the bits of wax and bits of air have risen up to the top, and it means that you can decant off nice, clear, pure honey from the bottom. Me and Zane have spent pretty much all morning doing that for a very long video that we're doing on Megamix, and now Zane's gonna have a go.

Yeah. Yeah.

Do you know what you're doing, Zane?

I've seen you do it. Seen me do it. It looks easy, but I know for a fact it is not going to be easy.

I'll give you the advice here. So these gates here, they're pretty good. Take your time, undo the nut, and then get your jar underneath, open it up, yeah, and it will start coming out. But just be aware that you'll get the glug. So when you want to stop it, you have to close it back down, and you might just have to push it in a little bit.

Right.

Yeah, so if you close it back down, it can still leak.

Okay.

Once you tighten it up, it will stop leaking. But you saw me like holding the thing there, so just always have—

Do you close it sooner than you think you need to, or do you—

Yes.

Yeah.

Well, you saw, like, we got the video. You saw the one that I did where it was just that glug come out and it just takes you over the edge. I thought I got away with it. I had not.

No, we'll give it a go.

Right, go on then, give it a go.

Yep.

Yep.

Go on the first. That was silly, wasn't it? I'm nervous. I don't want to make a fool of myself on camera.

Yeah, go down, go down. Only 'cause if you get a glug at that point— yeah, see, that's probably about right. So if you want to put a tiny little bit more in, you could still open that up again.

Okay.

And then close straight away. That's it. You just kind of want to swap them over once you get a chance. There you go.

Okay.

See, quite easy. And just go straight again.

See, obviously you pre-warning me that it does come out pretty quick, otherwise I would just—

Yeah.

Straight open. Start getting impatient going, oh, just open it a bit more, and— Yeah.

You see the glug?

Yeah, the speed that comes out after that.

That's it, back round. Yeah, that's it. You kind of just have to do it a bit early because you might get a glug. Grab another jar. It's quite nice, isn't it? Like you get into a little rhythm.

Yeah, pretty satisfying. This this whole process is quite satisfying. The beekeeping's the stressful part. I feel like getting the honey apart from the stickiness of it all. Very sticky.

Oh, well caught.

Nearly overcooked it.

I thought I'm not going to say anything to Zane's tongue and let him happen, and then there was the glug.

Because you distracted me, I was talking to camera.

They are your first 3 jars and there's no drips. Like, my first 3 jars were not like that, trust me.

I get to watch you do it first, it's almost cheating. Whoa.

But what I would say is look how clear the honey is.

Yeah.

Yeah, that is because we've done it properly. It's filtered properly, not too coarse, not too fine, but then you leave it to settle. If you don't leave it to settle, it comes out just like covered in air and bits of wax.

But you could see it in there yesterday, it just looked a bit fuzzy. Look at that. You see that?

You proud, Zane?

Very proud.

Yeah?

Very proud, mate.

So you think, like, you had 7 frames there, yeah? So 7 frames, about, it's about like £3 or £4 a frame. So you're probably talking like £20 to £30. 30 jars like that you got from your hive, it felt like nothing, did it, on the beehive. But if you— 30 jars, that's, that's all right, isn't it? A few presents and stuff.

Yeah, I'd be well happy with 30 jars. And that's from a hive that's potentially not really done that well.

Yeah.

If you've done the right things at the right time. Yeah.

So I'm quite blown away with how well Zayn has done there. I deliberately didn't like show him exactly how to do it. He did see me do it a couple of times, but Like you didn't miss a beat there. There's no drips. They're all up to like exactly the right level and they're all pretty even as well. You know, there's not one that's like higher than the other. The air gap's spot on. So I would say almost 4 perfect jars there. You've got a job for life, Zane.

Thank you, mate.

What is left next for this series though? I do think we need to get some lids on, get some labels on, get some wildflowers sorted, and maybe Zane and Chrissie can produce some gift sets. Obviously we need to go back, Zane, sort out the bees at some point, make sure they're ready for winter, take the strips out, see if they've gone into the double brood. But that is the honey harvest complete for 2023. Some very, very nice jars of honey from Zane's hive. Next episode, we'll be going back, making sure the varroa treatment's working, seeing how the bees are building up in that double brood box, and getting the bees ready for winter.