June Field Day Report - Honey Extraction

It was really nice to be able to show everyone our club hives for the first time at the Louisville Nature Center. They are doing very well and we were able to pull some honey from them to show how to extract in beautifully capped frames.

We took the frames inside and decapped them using four different tools: honey fork scraping tool, a honey roller, a decapping knife, and a decapping scraper. The consensus was that the knife was the worst at it, the honey fork worked really well but took off a lot of beeswax, and the honey roller and scraper worked the best, puncturing holes in the frames to release the honey, but not eliminating too much beeswax which could be returned to the hives.

We then showed everyone how to use the club extractor and gave anyone who wanted a try a hand at turning the crank, it was a nice demonstration.

The Kentucky Certified Honey Program Manager then talked about the KCHP program and how to get your honey certified as local honey. This program differs than the Kentucky Proud program, which only requires that you bottle in Kentucky, the honey doesn’t have to be FROM Kentucky. KCHP actually is a way to show consumers that it is LOCAL honey, so look for the Kentucky Certified Honey stickers on bottle when you are purchasing honey!!! It’s the best way to know you are getting it locally other than directly knowing the beekeeper who produces it.