Harvest Honey

[Ruben]

How do you all with 10-30 hives or more process your honey? Do you bottle it all when extracting or bulk some of it? The reason I am asking is this is my second year and I have 14 hives and it looks like I am going to have at least 500 -800 lbs of honey. If everyone buys some that has told me to call them when I get some then I have 200 lbs or so already sold. I was wondering if I should plan on getting some 5 gollon pails to put 400 lbs in and bottle the other 400 lbs or bottle it all, How would you do it if you were me and did not have a large customer base yet?

[Chef Isaac]

Hey Ruben!!! Nice to hear form you!

I would keep them in 5 gallon bukets and bottle as needed. Or bottle around 100 pounds ad keep the rest in buckets. You can also take the honey out of the buckets and into the bottling tank or bucket but it sucks to have to take the honey out f the bottles to fill an order.... lol :)

[carbide]

I normally bottle whatever amount I figure I'll be selling in a month or so. If the honey should be bottled and then crystallizes in the bottle it requires the proper equipment to re-liquify it without damaging the label. If however you store the honey in buckets (I use two gallon buckets, they're much lighter) and the honey then crystallizes , it's much easier to re-liquify.

[Curtis]

Congratulations, I see that they finally took to the strips. Quote "if I am able to get 4-6 supers of honey from 14 hives I will be tickled to death!"
Looks like you might die.
I use the 5 gal containers from Dadant. They are cheap and a honey gate screws on it too. Not too heavy to handle.
Curtis

[Big Stinger]

5 gallon buckets with very good lids.

[Ruben]

Thanks Curtis, adding the 3 frames of foundation with the 7 frames of starter strips did the trick. I'll call Dadant and get some containers.