Harvesting Honey by Wally Shaw

Harvesting Honey
The aim of this booklet is to help beekeepers to better understand honey itself and to harvest and prepare it for home use or sale retaining as much of its essential properties as possible. What exactly is honey, for it is certainly a lot more than a solution of various sugars in water? If we are to produce good honey it is important to understand how it should be handled in all stages between the hive and jar because in reality it is quite a delicate product. Stories about finding four thousand year old honey in Egyptian tombs and “and it was just as good as the day it was put there” are just that – stories. There are many similarities between honey and wines; they both need great care in their production, handing and storage if they are to develop and retain their full potential.
It is generally accepted that the `best` honey comes straight from the comb (cut comb or sections). The various processes that we use to get pristine honey from the comb into a jar all have the potential to damage it in some way. In Britain we currently get a premium price for home-produced honey (the envy of beekeepers in many other parts of the world) and it is our responsibility to see that we bring a top quality product to market.
VIEW Contents
- Introduction
- What is Honey?
- What Else Does Honey Contain?
- Hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF)
- Heating Honey
- Honey Foraging
- Harvesting Honey
- Taking Advantage of Different Honeys
- Which combs can I take?
- Getting honey off the Hive
- A warning about the use of clearer boards
- Essential Precautions when harvesting honey
- Other tips about harvesting honey
- A final warning before extraction
- Equipment for the Processing of Honey
- Uncapping combs
- Uncapping tray
- Extractors
- Heather honey
- Preliminary filtering of the honey
- What to do with wet supers
- Preparing the Honey for Bottling
- Creamed or soft-set honey
- Marketing clear honey
- The honey ripener and bottling
- Batch numbers and best before dates
- How to be kind to your honey
- In Conclusion
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