As we move into the winter of the bee season it is unusual to focus on honey extraction equipment.

Recently, I invested some time with a reasonably new beekeeper [2013] who owns a citrus, macadamia and mango orchard in Limpopo province, Gauteng. 

She owns 19 honeybee colonies in her apiary which is fantastic & has mostly single super chambers. In order to extract the honey she needed to crush it and filter it by hand. I advised her that this is a bad idea due to its inefficiency.    

We discussed at length the reasons behind this & in a nutshell she needs to increase her apiary to 60 bee hives and invest in a 12 Frame electric honey extractor - even with 19 colonies a 6 frame is ideal - and here's why!         

Do you know how long it takes to fill a 'wet super' during a nectar flow?    
I advised the client that if she had simply extracted the honey with a honey spinner & placed the 'wet comb' back in the super chamber & back in the field on her orchards that it would be a matter of 7-10 days for the super chamber to be completely full & ready to harvest again! 

How can this be? 
Bees take an immense amount of energy & resources to build honey comb onto frames! Every time a beekeeper destroys the hardworking efforts of their bees by harvesting the comb while trying to harvest honey by crushing it is literally interrupting the nectar flow for bees. 

You see, if you harvest honeycomb & crush it you remove the storage units for any further honey production and replace it with weeks of reconstruction for the bees! By the time they replace the removed honey comb on the frames the nectar flow of most crops, orchards & flowers is over, the opportunity gone!    

What is the difference in honey yield?
If your peak nectar flow lasts 4-5 weeks then your super chamber is full & you harvest it by end of week 2 or in week 3, your honey flow stops and you only enjoy a single harvest.
 
Scenario B) goes like this: You invest in an additional super chamber & a honey extractor suitable for your budget & apiary size. You harvest your first super full of glorious natural raw honey with about 10Kg from 10 full frames. [Make sure it is ripe of course before doing so.] You place the empty super on to the bee hive at the same time as taking the full one off.
 
After 48 hours of extracting you place the now 'wet' super back on to the bee hive with all the honeycomb intact. The bees continue to fill the wet cells with new honey while continuing to build the new honeycomb from scratch in the empty super.   

By the end of the nectar flow of the crop or orchard the first super is ready to be harvested again at end of week 4 or 5. Using about 16 hives as a case study and selling the honey wholesale, you make the money back on the first harvest you paid for the honey extractor and make your profit on the second harvest. 
 
Plus we haven't yet counted the second super that was added which will now also have honeycomb.  [Based on the price of a 6 frame extractor]     
     
     
     Email for more details