Honey Processing
This is how we process our honey
Once we know the honey is ripe to take we add a clearer board to the hive for 24 hours to clear out the bees from the supers ( honey boxes ) the bees then go down into the main hive. We then return a day or two later to check all the bees have cleared out. Then we take off the supers and take them back home to be processed.
The frames are then taken from of the supers and then have the top wax capping taken off using an uncapping fork or knife this is quite a slow and messy job.
The frames are then placed to a centrifuge spinner to have all the honey spun out of the frames.
The honey is then filterd through a doubble strainer to remove any bits of wax or any other particles.
Honey After straining
The honey is left to let the air settle out for a day or two berfore jarring and labeling.
The finneshed product in the jar delicious local grimsby honey. Throughout in the seasons you find that spring honey is light in colour. mid summer golden in the late summer quite a dark colur and all will taste quite diffrent.
We also make soft set honey, this has a nice soft texture and quite spreable nice to spread on toast.
The process is that we decrystallize set honey that is quite granular. By warming it to 38c which this melts the honey back in to runny honey again. This can take a few days to decrystallize. Then we add 10% of a seed honey which is a soft set honey. That is mixed in very slowly over 48 hours then the honey is jarred and left in a cool place for a short time for the honey to reset into nice smooth spreadable delicious honey.