6.22.2009

Honey Press

If you keep bees using a top bar hive like I do, you wind up with plenty of beautiful honey comb. I've come to greatly appreciate the pleasures of eating honey in the comb, but sometimes I also want to extract the honey from the comb and I continue to experiment with different low-tech methods for doing so.

The funky little Sesame Street segment I posted recently showed a nice honey press, but I haven't found anything similar in my web searches for "honey press." However, I did find this page by beekeeper James Satterfield on Making and Using a Honey Press. I think I might try something similar. I wish his photos were a bit larger, but I think you can get the gist from his web page and take it from there.

Let me know if you have other low-tech, low-cost ideas for pressing honey from the comb, or if you have leads about where to find a honey press like the one in the Sesame Street video.

4 comments:

Matthew said...

I was intrigued by that device in the Seseme Street episode, too. (Such a cute beekeeper, too!). In my big book of honey etc. history by Eva Crane, there doesn't seem to be a mention of honey presses, although straining through cloth and pottery (with holes) is noted.

Gerry Gomez Pearlberg said...

Interesting, Matthew. I have that book; I'll take a look soon. I wonder if, in the video, she's using some other kind of "press" device and just calling it a honey press. I need to look into that further when I have time.

Anonymous said...

Unless I can find somethign better, I'm going to give Norm's press a try. Given that we're up to an even dozen hives this year, crush and strain would be an bit more labour than we'd like.

Kitt said...

How funny. I just saw the same video (poking around bee links on youtube), saw the same press and started Googling to see if I could find one. This post came up. Small world.