After three years of trying bees, we are finally extracting honey from the hives this fall! It’s not too hard (read: I had sweet husband do most of it), and quite fascinating. And since I didn’t know exactly how I would be presenting this to you while it was happening, I took some video and some pictures and then in the end decided that rather than write it all up, I’d mash it all into a video and just tell you how it went. It is super helpful to have a friend who knows what they’re doing. Especially if they have an industrial sized extractor. So here’s the beginner’s guide to extracting honey video. Enjoy! I’m going to have some toast. With honey.
If the video doesn’t load for you, watch it here.
Keep preparing! Angela
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I have read and heard that raw, unfiltered honey is the best for you, so I am wondering (since I know most people are not referring to eating it with sticks and dead bees) what exactly is filtered out with each level of filtering. The pollen is helpful to allergy sufferers, I know, so at what level is that lost? Or is that only an issue with heating and commercial filtering processes?
From what I understand there are different levels of filtration and an ultra fine filtration will remove any pollen present. The coarse filtering removes bits of wax, bits of bees, some air bubbles, and any other small solids. Pretty much it makes it look nicer and keeps you from eating a bunch of wax. You could eat honey completely unfiltered, but you’d have a lot of wax to deal with. In addition to ultra fine filtering, commercial honey has been pasteurized through heat processing which destroys enzymes that are naturally present and those enzymes are what makes raw honey so good for you.
So you didn’t pasteurize it to kill any possible Botulism spores that the bees may have accidentally brought into the hives. So, I’ve heard from pediatricians and some geriatric Doctor’s that you shouldn’t give unpasteurized honey to the very young (2 or younger), or to the old (72 or older), or the infirmed because if there are even very small amounts of botulism spores they could make these individuals very ill.
What many people (even some bee keepers, bless their hearts) don’t realize is that pasteurization does NOT kill botulism spores. It only kills the good stuff, and gives a false sense of security. Babies don’t have strong enough acids in their stomachs to kill the spores before around 6 mos of age. Doctors say 2 years just to be safe, but one year old is probably already good. I don’t know if weak stomach acid is common in every person with an impaired immune system. I’m just not sure the two things are related. I will say, though, that before the advent of baby formula, infant botulism was pretty much unheard of. Maybe they just didn’t know about it, but then again, maybe getting the food they were designed to get has something to do with it…
Yeah I heard about that too. So we don’t give raw honey to a child below 2. Big deal. The rest of us can go ahead and help ourselves. Yum! My question is, in our part of the world we try to get forest honey but it almost always come as very liquid and syrupy. Kinda like maple syrup consistency. Whereas the raw honey we buy from grocers are always gunky. I’m afraid that one or the other is fake. How can you tell?