Extracting 14 kilograms in a kitchen that is not big enough
Both hives had a full super by mid-July, and the second had started on another, so I took eleven capped frames off on a hot Saturday and extracted them in the kitchen on the Sunday. The extractor was a hand-cranked tangential one borrowed from the association, which takes three frames at a time and has to be stopped and the frames turned to do the second side. It occupies the entire floor space between the sink and the table. Everything else went on the worktops or out in the hall.
Clearing the bees the day before worked well: a clearer board under each super on Friday evening, and by Saturday morning there were perhaps thirty bees left in the supers rather than thousands. The frames came off one at a time into a lidded box, and I brushed the stragglers off at the hive rather than carrying them to the house, which I did last year and regretted.
Uncapping was with a serrated bread knife warmed in a jug of hot water, over a tray with a rack. It is slower than a proper uncapping fork but it leaves a cleaner surface. The cappings went into a sieve over a bowl and gave up about 400 g of honey overnight on their own. Spinning: three frames, 60 turns at moderate speed, stop, turn the frames, 60 turns, stop, turn back, 60 more, because tangential extractors will blow out a frame if you spin the first side fully before the second has been lightened. I lost one frame anyway, an old one with a sagging comb, which folded out of the wire on the second spin. The wax and honey from that one went in the cappings sieve.
Honey ran from the extractor tap through a double sieve into a 30 litre bucket, where it sat for two days with the lid on for the air bubbles to rise. Final weight, after jarring on Wednesday: 14.2 kg, in 32 jars of 454 g plus a few small ones. The first hive gave about 8 kg and the second about 6, which matches the amount of brood space I had been seeing in each.
The floor was sticky for a week despite two moppings, and I found honey on the inside of the hall door, which nobody has explained. Next year the extractor goes in the shed with a groundsheet, and the frames come to it, not the other way round.