Bill wrote:

"Honeycare advocates for Langstroth style frame hives so A. an excluder 
can
be used to separate honey from brood and B. if the brood is left alone 
the
hive is more likely to survive or not abscond and C. so the moveable 
frames
can be extracted as it is virtually impossible to extract a top bar 
frame,
thus the pressing of top bar combs."

I don't think that many small scale beekeepers in Africa are likely to 
have access to a rotary extractor and, in any case, the ambient 
temperatures are likely to be approaching that at which wax weakens.  I 
have forwarded the mail, and this one, to a Nigerian friend of mine who 
has experience of extracting honey from TBHs in West Africa and hope 
that she will describe to us how this can be done in a way that 
produces quality honey.

My own, small scale, method is first to take out the best looking comb 
for sale as cut comb, which is much simpler and gets the best price; 
then the remainder is squeezed, either by hand or in a fruit press, and 
strained before bottling.  The wax provides an additional harvest but 
there isn't as much as you might expect.

If the entrance to the TBH is at the end and not, as in commercially 
produced ones, in the middle, it is easy to get comb that hasn't been 
bred in as the bees rear their brood near the entrance and store their 
honey towards the rear of the hive.

Chris







  

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