The honey extraction facility. The large machine mid picture is a honey extractor, then to the left is an Apimelter to separate the wax cappings from the honey, and to the left of that is a honey creamer to grind down the honey crystals and make smooth soft set honey. In the background are the honey filtering and settling tank and the warming cabinet. Supers full of honey are taken off the hives and placed in the warming room for 24 hours before extracting. This is a heated, insulated room with a controlled low humidity to reduce the moisture content of any unripe honey and help it flow more easily when put in the extractor. The machine that does all the hard work – our 16 frame programmable automatic self turning tangential extractor. This machine will extract the most viscous or even semi crystallised honeys and leave the honey combs virtually dry. Pouring freshly extracted Balsam honey into buckets for filtering. This runny, straw coloured honey is collected from the Himalayan Balsam plant that has made the rivers around Cheshire its home over the last couple of decades. Not a great favourite of the ecologists but the bees love it and it makes great tasting honey. Using an uncapping fork to remove the wax cappings off the comb prior to putting into the extractor. All our uncapping is done by hand to minimise damage to the comb so the bees can reuse it to fill with honey again.
