How to Harvest Honey From Bee Hives- From Hive to Bottle
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Have you ever wondered what a honey harvest is like or are you considering becoming a beekeeper? In this post, we will cover how our honey is harvested from field to bottle!

One of the first projects we took on after buying our property was purchasing honey bees, and all of the equipment necessary to own bees! As a new beekeeper, there was so much to learn about both keeping bees, and how to extract honey! In the first years, we only purchased 3 hives, but it has quickly expanded to where we have honey buckets for sale from our small operation. In this post, you will find our step by step process of extracting honey from our bee hives. Whether you are interested in harvesting your own honey, or just want to learn the process, this post covers it all!
We quickly learned the importance of bees on our acreage for pollinating our garden and orchard. We find that the sweet reward of beekeeping is well worth the effort! Our bees produce enough honey that we are able to keep a portion of the honey for our own use, and then we are also able to sell a large portion to consumers. If you are local to Iowa, you can purchase our honey directly from our farm, or you can also find us at local farmer’s markets during the market season! See all the ways you can purchase from us, as well as all the goods we sell such as fresh vegetables and chicken eggs with the link below.

1. Bring the honey from the bee yard
One of the first steps of extracting honey begins out in the bee yard. Our primary purpose of owning honey bees is to pollinate our garden and orchard, so we need to go out into the field and decide how much honey to take from each. In Iowa, we make this decision in July, as we want to pull the excess frames of honey before applying a mite treatment. We aim to leave 90 pounds of honey per hive. This should be enough to feed the bees, but we can enjoy and share the excess without worry of the bees starving. To do this, we will check all of the frames in the honey supers are fully capped. I will often move around some honey frames to make sure the top box is full of only capped honey. that’s one benefit of only having medium hives, all my equipment is interchangeable.

2. Removing bees
We want all of the bees removed from the box of honey before we get the frames into the shed we will use to extract. The first step happens in the bee field. We use these fume boards with a scent on them to make the bees move away from the box of honey. The black top takes the heat from the sun to warm up and make the smell stronger. Leave this on the hive for about ten minutes, then you can carry it to the truck. Once I have all the boxes loaded on the truck, we bring the boxes over to our shed where we do some additional steps to remove the remaining bees. The bees do not want to give up their hard work, so they are often clinging to the honey frames. We take each frame and run it in front of a shop vacuum set to “blow” so the bees are blown away. (Or you could also use a leaf blower on low as well) Then we cover the box with a wet cloth to keep the bees out.

3. Uncapping the comb
Once the honey framers are brought inside, it’s time to get to work! In order to make the honey flow from the frame there are capping from each cell that need to be removed. We use an uncapping knife to remove the majority of the cappings, followed by an uncapping fork to remove the cells that the knife missed. Once all the of cells are open the honey will be ready to spin out of the frames. In this uncapping step, take great care to damage the comb as little as possible. The bees will be able to have a head start next year if the comb is kept in good working order. We do not use a heated knife, but many beekeepers do.

4. Extraction
Once the cells are opened, the next step is to run the frames through the extractor. There are two kinds of extractors: tangential and radial. A tangential extractor involves spinning the frames one direction, flipping them over and spinning the other way to remove the honey from both sides of the frame. For the first five years of beekeeping we used a tangential manual honey extractor that held 3 frames. It involves a lot of labor to do this slipping– but it is manageable on a small scale! In 2024, we upgraded to a radial electric honey extractor. Radial electric honey extractors use centrifugal force to remove honey from both sides. The frames are placed inside so the top bars face outward, like the spokes of a wheel and it spins for about 20 minutes to remove the fresh honey from the frames. Be very mindful to not spin the extractor too quickly as you can cream your honey on accident!

From the extractor, there is a 5 gallon bucket with a fine mesh sieve at the bottom. While many people ask for unfiltered honey, this filter does not remove pollen– it only removes dead bees, larva or other impurities in the honey. At this point, it’s a great idea to check the water content of your honey. Too much water can cause it to crystalize too quickly. Using a refractometer is the best way to check water content. The moisture content should be below 17% for no moisture to occur.

4. Bottling
We sell all of our raw honey in 1#, half-gallon, gallon or five-gallon plastic bucket options. We do not add anything to our honey so it goes straight into jars to sell. In Iowa, there are no licenses or commercial kitchens required if you are only selling honey. We typically bottle 500 jars at a time, and then keep the remaining honey in five-gallon buckets.

5. Cleaning up- frames and floor
We are so glad we have our pack shed so we can avoid processing honey in the garage or house. Wax is difficult to remove without scraping and honey is sticky– so having a dedicated or covered space to extract is a blessing.
Wax cappings- we take the tote of cappings left from extracting and set the box outside for the bees to pick through and use whatever they can. After a week, I will render this wax down to use– off our 40 hives, there’s actually only about an ice cream bucket worth the wax by the time we’ve let the bees keep most of it.
Honey processing tools- give them a good scrub and power wash.
What to do with crystalized honey- if your honey crystalizes before you use it, simply heat it up a bit to make it a liquid again.

How to rent honey extracting equipment
We know that the expensive processing equipment for honey can be hard to come by! Renting extracting equipment can be great when you are first getting started, especially for hobby beekeepers. We decided to start renting out our equipment because we know how helpful it can be, as we rented equipment ourselves for a few years! Now that we have a great system set up, we are excited to share it with our community. And as a bonus, when we rent out our equipment we are able to set aside money to be able to continue to upgrade the equipment! Learn more about renting honey extracting equipment below.