crush and strain 2019

We worked in the middle of the kitchen floor to contain the sticky clean-up.  Imagine a compact vertical stack - from the bottom up: 

• brown paper
• food safe 5 gallon bucket
• combcapper
• medium frame of capped honey. 

Sagar and Quin (co-workers) cut comb with a paring knife from foundationless frames. Comb was crushed in the bucket using a 2 inch Plastic Joint Knife attached to a pole.

Crushed comb was poured into the strainer bottler and left to sit for a few days so that foam (tiny air bubbles) can rise before bottling.

After cutting away honey comb, frames are returned to the Storage Tote. Over-night, honey dripped into the Tote and were captured too. Sticky frames were stacked outside in a location away from the hives.  Bees assisted with the final honey clean-up of sticky frames - a circle of life scene which reminds me of sky burial.

In the 3rd photo, I used a slow shutter iPhone app.  Crawling bee behavior looks like white dots while flying behavior looks like brown lines (classic multiple exposure).