Subject: Re: extracting honey

From: [email-masked] (Andy Nachbaur)
Date: Thu, 16 Feb 1995 07:11:00 GMT

[email-masked] (allen Dick 546-2588)refer#: None
 wrote:
>David J Trickett ([email-masked]) wrote:
>: Jordan Schwartz ([email-masked]) wrote:
>: : It seems to me that once upon a time, people extracted honey without t
>: : aid of mechanical devices.  I saw a PBS special a couple months back
>: : about honey harvesters in the Himalayas or some such far flung locale
>: : where they would seperate the wax from the honey by boiling (heating)
>: : it.  Needless to say, this will destroy your comb, but I'm curious if
>: : anyone has ever tried this?
>
>: Yes, but this will also destroy the flavor of your honey.  Wax melts at
>: approximately 150 degrees F., My understanding is that temperatures
>: above approximately 120 degrees F. will damage honey flavor (those in
>: the know, does this have anything to do with the temperature at which
>: enzymes start breaking down?)  Certainly, boiling it will damage it.
 |----end quotes---------------------------------|

                              Gosh Guys,
   ______________________
  (//////////////////////)    I was not going to get into this, butt,
  (//////////////////////)    for sure this is not a recommendation.
  /~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~\
 |     Wild Flower!       |   Forty years ago when I was several years
 |                        |   younger and had lots of hair, I had a
 |  _   _          \    / |   neighbor who was a native of France and
 | | |_| | __      _ \/   |   a old time beekeeper. You know the kind
 | | |-| |:  :|\ |:_ ::   |   with a full flowing beard and bib cover-
 | |_| |_|:__:| \|:_ ||   |   alls diving around in a beat up old Dodge
 |                        |   12 cylinder truck running on 10.
 |  Product of USA..16oz  |
 |________________________|   Anyway this old beeman was truly a good

beekeeper if only a little hard to understand because of his broken
English and French accents but we both spoke the common language of
beekeeping. Being young myself and with a real vacuum for bee knowledge
I watched and listen to every word as he worked one of his bee yards in
an eucalyptus or blue gum grove. The flow was on and the black beasts he
called his French bees filled the air and the supers were chuck a block
full of honey. Don't remember getting stung more then a few times, I had
not veil as he wore none and to do less would certainty show disrespect
towards his bees or or his beekeeping skills, or some such bull. But for
certain if I would have looked a little foolish wearing a veil when he
had none. He did have a tulle veil wrapped around his straw hat, the
first one I had ever seen, and was smoking the bees with a big smoker
filled with eucalyptus leaves and bark. The pungent odor which still
turns my clock back when I remember to take some out with me to my own
bee yards.

   I learned a lot during my visits with this beeman, about keeping bees
maybe the old way he brought with him from France. How to raise queens
without a grafting tool and the like. I did not get into extracting
honey until many visits later. I had seen his honey in its clean
attractive labeled quart mason jars in several local stores and assumed
he had a extracting setup like the one's I had read about in the bee
journals and seen on other beekeeper visits. Hopefully better then
what I had in the old pump house.

   One day several years later, by now I knew it all, and had bees of
my own, I looked this old beeman up to see how he was doing and look at
his extracting set up. When I dropped in he was busy jarring up some
nice looking honey, blue gum, not sage or clover, and it was a good
extra light amber, just missing a low white in color and I tasted it and
no doubts about it, it was eucalyptus, as all eucalyptus tastes like
eucalyptus. Its not bad, if you have never tasted it, it will remind you
of old fashioned cough drops.. Never was sure if eating those box after
box of cough drops would make me any sicker then the cough, but I know
the Smith Brothers were part of my early life as a box of these would go
farther at the 15 cent Saturday matinee then just about anything else
you could get for a nickel. I always got a quarter on Saturday to go
to the town theater, the one we called the flea house, so I could get
two boxes, saved me many a time from biting my tongue during the best
part of the saturday serial and from throwing my pop corn around if I
had got some instead of the Smith Bro's, and the cowboy hero would dare
kiss anything but his horse.

   Anyway his honey house as his honey was clean, neat, and attractive.
I then notice nothing that appeared to be an extractor, lots of nice
shinney stainless steal double boilers, the kind you used to see at the
fish market for boiling fresh crabs alive, to watch them turn red, but
no extractors. So I asked, and was told he never owned one....Yes he
melted the honey out of the combs, cut it out first, and put the wired
frame's back in the hives with starter foundation, a small strip
attached to the top of the frames for the bees to cluster on and draw
out new combs. Of course these combs would have lots of wild size cells
or drone cells, but over the years he had saved out plenty of good brood
combs that I would not have known the difference from drawn combs on
good foundation. He was not the only old time beekeeper I knew that did
not use foundation, but the only one I met that produced honey and did
not own an extractor.

   How did he do it, well for sure he never boiled the honey or it would
be as dark as a black night and have a taste that would stay with you
far longer then the calories. He heated it just hot enough to melt the
wax, and then drew the honey off from the bottom. His tanks were water
jacked and heated with adjustable gas burners. His wax was very nice
looking and he turned it into hand dipped candles. To this day I would
not criticize this beeman for his method of extracting honey, it worked
for him and my guess it worked for his dad and his dad's dad. He had no
trouble selling his honey and people would come to his home to pick it
up, and it sold well in the few stores he marketed it in. He's long gone
now and with him a page of history in this area as I have not met any
other beeman then or since that extracts his honey this way.

                          ttul Andy-