Spinning honey

Today the big day was finally here: time to make honey. I remembered that last year it didn't take very long to spin out the honey, but then somewhere in the middle of the quite lengthy process this year I remembered I had only one super then and four this time round! Quite a difference. As in my previous dealings with the hives this summer, I had Mr. V to help me eat the honey.
First of all we had to remove the supers, which was not difficult, as the bees were mainly in the brood chamber and couldn't get out of the crown board, because Mr. V had installed the porter bee escapes (one way systems). There were still a few bees in the supers, which we would have to deal with later. We slid boards above and below the Moon supers and strapped them tight, so we could transport them without any more bees getting in.

Moon supers all tied up and ready to go

Star supers ready to disappear

Stupidly, not thinking very clearly (which has happened to me quite a bit of late), I removed the one way system from the Moon as soon as we had bound up the supers, so we had quite a few bees buzzing around. Must remember NOT to do that in future and I didn't for the Star. As I only had two boards (not very well prepared, I know), we used a towel, like last year, to shield the Star supers from bees.
All the supers went into the car and off we drove to the kitchens for the next steps. First of all, using the feather, we cleared the frames of the remaining bees outside.

Supers ready for extraction

Last year, you may remember, the tool of the day was the feather. Well, this year tool of the day (if you can call him a tool) was definitely Mr. V who was indefatigable and truly helpful and - if truth be told - thinking a lot more about what was going on than I was.
To get at the honey we first had to uncap the comb on both sides of the frames, place them, four at a time, into the extractor and then spin them. After a few spins, you turn the frames round and get the honey out of the other side.

Tool of the day!

Removing the wax cappings

Spinning honey

A frame in the extractor

A few noteworthy incidents this time: Some frames had pollen mixed in among the honey, which first of all set my into a slight fluster, until I realized if the pollen did spin out, the mesh at the bottom of the centrifuge would catch it and prevent it going into the honey.
I forgot to uncap both sides of a frame one time and Mr. V, although he noticed, didn't say anything as he thought this might be what you do. No. Just I being silly.
While taking off the supers, I only wore the jacket which had the irritable habit of sliding up when I was bending down, so not only did a bee sting me at the base of my spine, but a few bees also crept into my jacket. The first I noticed of them was a bee suddenly sitting on the inside of my veil as we were brushing bees off the frames. I immediately took off the jacket, and out flew another two bees that had been strolling around inside, too!
As expected some of the frames had rape honey in them which was too solid to extract. However, there was not much, suggesting the rape fields are far enough away for it not to be a major problem. Still, next year I will have to extract the rape harvest earlier.

After clearing away we had a tub full of honey - I would estimate almost three times as much as last year - and a huge plastic container full of wax cappings with some honey mixed in.

The wax cappings - crunchy!

The new honey flowing into the storage tub