Upscaling from Hobbyist to Sideliner - The Honey House (321)

321 - Upscaling from Hobbyist to Sideliner Beekeeping - The Honey House

[music]

Jeff Ott: Welcome to Beekeeping Today Podcast presented by Betterbee, your source for beekeeping news, information, and entertainment. I'm Jeff Ott.

Becky Masterman: I'm Becky Masterman.

Global Patties: Today's episode is brought to you by the bee nutrition superheroes at Global Patties. Family-operated and buzzing with passion, Global Patties crafts protein-packed patties that'll turn your hives into powerhouse production. Picture this, strong colonies, booming brood, and honey flowing like a sweet river. It's super protein for your bees and they love it. Check out their buffet of patties, tailor-made for your bees in your specific area. Head over to www.globalpatties.com and give your bees the nutrition they deserve.

Jeff: Hey, a quick shout-out to Betterbee and all of our sponsors whose support allows us to bring you this podcast each week without resorting to a fee-based subscription. We don't want that and we know you don't either. Be sure to check out all of our content on the website. There you can read up on all of our guests, read our blog on the various aspects and observations about beekeeping, search for, download, and listen to over 300 past episodes, read episode transcripts, leave comments and feedback on each episode, and check on podcast specials from our sponsors. You can find it all at www.beekeepingtoday.com.

Becky: Ready to grow your beekeeping operation? Whether you're moving from hobbyist to sideliner or scaling up to a commercial setup, Betterbee is here to help. From expert tips on optimizing your equipment to advice on finding the right products for your growing needs, our knowledgeable in-house team is ready to guide you every step of the way. Take the next step toward a smart, sustainable operation. Visit betterbee.com today or call us at 1 800-632-3379. That's 1-800-632-3379. We're here to help Monday through Friday, 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM Eastern.

Strong Microbials presents an exciting new product. SuperFuel, the probiotic fondant that serves as nectar on demand for our honeybees. SuperFuel is powered by three remarkable bacteria known as Bacilli, supporting bees and breaking down complex substances for easy digestion and nutrient absorption. This special energy source provides all the essential amino acids, nutrients, polyphenols, and bioflavonoids, just like natural flower nectar.

Vital for the bees' nutrition and overall health, SuperFuel is the optimal feed for dearth periods, over winter survival, or whenever supplemental feeding is needed. The big plus is the patties do not get hive beetle larvae so it offers all bioavailable nutrients without any waste. Visit strongmicrobials.com now to discover more about SuperFuel and get your probiotic fondant today.

Jeff: Hey, everybody, welcome to the show. Thank you to our sponsors. Becky, this is our third in the series of upscaling the bee operation, going from hobbyist to sideliner. This has been an exciting journey this month.

Becky: It has been so much fun. I'm excited about this segment because guess what healthy bees produce?

Jeff: Happy beekeepers.

Becky: That and? [laughs]

Jeff: Honey.

Becky: Lots of honey. Hopefully, if people are upscaling their operations, they will have a honey situation on their hands and they're going to have to give it some thought as far as how they're going to get that honey extracted and bottled.

Jeff: Exactly. Today we are excited to bring back to the show John Rath, who is one of the co-owners of our sponsor Betterbee. John, welcome back to Beekeeping Today Podcast.

John Rath: Hey guys, thanks for having me back.

Becky: Thanks so much, John, for joining us.

Jeff: John, for those who really don't know you and haven't heard the earlier show from back in October of 2023, can you tell us a little bit about your background and who you are?

John: I'm a mechanical engineer by training, but I've been doing this beekeeping supply thing since 2014. At Betterbee, I focus mostly on the product development side of things. I'm immersed in the product things all the time, especially in the areas of honey extractors and honey processing. It's a fun topic for me.

Jeff: We're going to draw on that knowledge and expertise here in this episode. The purpose, just as a recap for our listeners, today's episode we're focusing on upscaling a honey house operation when a beekeeper is looking to go from hobbyist to sideliner. They might have that four-frame crank extractor, I don't know, Becky, maybe in their dining room or something.

Becky: Okay. Mine plugs in. It plugs in [laughs].

Jeff: A plugin four-frame extractor in their dining room, but are looking to upscale and manage and be able to process the honey that a growing operation would want. How do you size that? How do you determine what equipment is needed in a honey house and what size of a honey house is needed? Those are big questions that someone looking to expand their operation--

John: It's a process for people usually gradually growing from a small four-frame extractor up to bigger equipment, bigger space. Some people grow gradually, some people make the decision, "Okay, I'm going to go to 100 hives next year and I need to grow the rest of my operation to keep up with my hives." It really depends on what your situation is. Is this a side job for you? It's not a full-time job. How much space do you have? How much money do you have? How much time do you have? How much of each do you have?

[laughter]

John: That will influence what equipment you need and how you're going to process your honey.

Becky: This sounds like a pie chart, John.

[laughter]

John: Yes, it would make a good pie chart.

[laughter]

Jeff: Let's look at that a little bit closer. Let's say a beekeeper has worked up to 25, 50 colonies and they're saying, "I'm thinking I can go sideliner and I'd like to get away from my day job and just be a beekeeper full-time." They are looking at expanding their operation. We've talked about bees and equipment, but in the honey house, what are some of the key factors that they need to answer for themselves when they look at that?

John: I think one key question is, "Are you planning to retail your honey or wholesale it? Will you need to add a sizable bottling operation or are you just going to fill up pails and sell it that way?" I think another big question is, "Do you already have the space that you'll be working in or are you thinking about putting up a building or doing a renovation on a building?" Because you'll want to plan out how big the space is and what features that space has. Do you have power available? Do you have water available? Things like that.

Becky: You need space for your supers, and preferably, a hot room if possible.

John: Yes. If you're designing a honey house, you need to think about power, what equipment you'll have, and what amperage and voltage you need to run all that equipment. You really want to have good access to the room too. You'll be unloading heavy supers hopefully from a vehicle of some sort. How are you getting them into the building? Do you have a garage door? Do you have a forklift? Do you want a surface that you can roll a pallet jack on? Pallet jacks are the greatest thing ever. You can transport 3,000 pounds effortlessly. You don't want to be moving individual supers by hand if you don't have to.

Becky, you're right. A warm room, I think that's a super important part of a honey house. Either a dedicated warm room or the ability to heat the entire space because honey moves a lot faster when it is warm. Your extracting times are quicker and the honey flows faster through all the pipes and hoses and everything, especially strainers. You can't strain honey that's cold.

Jeff: What is a warm room in a honey house?

John: Some beekeeping operations will have a room that they bring their honey supers into and warm them up for a while, maybe a day or so, to get them up to temperature maybe in 90 or 100 degrees. Then you can extract them and the honey will extract much more quickly. They stay warm pretty readily once they're warm, but it does take a long time to get there. You might have a big room with propane heaters or an electric heater, or even a heated floor just to warm up the supers, or you can just have your entire extracting room be warm and bring your supers into that space a day before you extract, but be prepared to sweat.

Becky: Then it's harder to get helpers the next time.

John: Yes.

Jeff: [crosstalk] good point.

Becky: The other thing too is that you can also control your humidity so then you can also hopefully control small hive beetle damage to your honey supers, right?

John: Yes, I'm not so sure about the humidity for small hive beetles, but humidity for honey moisture content sake, it is nice to dehumidify the room as well and that'll help pull down your moisture content if it's too high.

Becky: Small hive beetles need humidity. You can regulate your warm room and have lower humidity and you can also solve the pest problem so that your honey doesn't get slimed because nobody wants that [laughs].

John: Pests are a good point. You need to be able to process your honey quickly enough so that it doesn't get slimed. You have to think about how quickly will you pull your honey. Then how quickly do you need to extract it to get the supers out of there before anything happens? We can get into that a little bit, talking about extractor size or uncapping equipment, how many hours do you have to do the work and how many supers do you need to process?

Jeff: The key focal point in any honey house will be the extractor. Thumbing through the catalog and Betterbee catalog is a great example. Just the size of extractors and types of extractors can be daunting. Every beekeeper has an opinion on extractors and that's great. What's your recommendation for helping a beekeeper determine their size of an extractor, especially if they're just starting out and building out their honey house, but they're going to be, "This is going to be a long-term effort"?

John: The extractor is just one component in the system, but it is an important one. What I like to do is look at how much time you have to extract and how many frames you need to extract. We have a little article on our website we can put in the show notes, even a calculator that helps you calculate these things. We can run through an example. Say you have 50 supers that you're looking to extract and make the math easy, they're 10 frames each, which means 500 frames. You know that you've got four hours available to extract it, say at the end of the day or part of your weekend or whatever the case may be.

Then the cycle time of the extractor determines how long you'll need to spin them for. Usually a radial extractor you can spin for about 10 minutes and get all the honey out, but you need time to transfer the frames too. We'll call it 15 minutes per cycle or 4 cycles per hour. 4 hours times 4 runs per hour, that's 16 runs of the extractor if you keep up and don't slack off at all.

[laughter]

John: 500 frames divided by 16 runs, you need a 31-frame extractor to achieve that. You can just run through that math and play with different size extractors. For that, a 30 frame would be good if you're thinking of growing or you want to be able to run a little bit bigger, you might go up a size and get one a little bit bigger, or one of my favorites is to run two extractors in parallel.

Becky: Oh, that's fancy.

John: That's an especially good choice for an operation that hasn't grown yet, but you think you might grow. You can start with, say, one 20 frame or one 30 frame and then add another one of the same size or even a similar size. It doesn't really matter. Then you can run one while you're loading and unloading the other one.

Becky: That'll also help you if you want to do some batch honey from apiaries and maybe specific plants.

John: That's a question I often ask people when they call Betterbee asking for help with their extractor system. Are they extracting a whole bunch of honey that's all the same, or are they wanting the ability to do small runs? Having a small extractor and the ability to segregate the honey, that's important for some people if they've got different types of honey coming in.

Jeff: Many beekeepers would like to separate their light honey from their amber honey to their dark honey and keep them all separate and then run them all at the same time. That would be really valuable. One of the biggest time consumers in the honey house, I think can be the uncapping process. When beekeepers are looking to expand, they are looking to get away from their honey scrapers or their hot knives and they're starting to look at different types of uncappers. What's your advice along those lines?

John: Yes, definitely. I think going to a sideliner status often means getting away from hand uncapping. I think, really, that's the part that a lot of people dislike the most too. You really got to think about what part you hate or what part your help hates doing [laughter] or can you even get help? If you can't get people to help you, that means you need to invest more in the equipment.

A lot of people are using just a cold knife or a hot knife to uncap by hand and their wrists are killing them and they need something better. Depending on your budget and how many frames you want to run through, there are a bunch of different choices. One of our most popular uncappers for this size beekeeper is the Lyson Manual Steam Uncapper. That's an oscillating knife uncapper, but it's hand-powered. You turn a crank to lower the frames through it. It's a lot less costly than a more automated unit.

Then we have the more automated unit, which has a built-in water heater so it can run continuously, whereas the other one has to be refilled. The water has to be refilled every hour and a half or so. Either one will make the uncapping so much easier. You just place the frame in and it cuts the cappings off. That really speeds up the operation for people.

Becky: I'm going to ask a dumb question, but what's the water for? Because I've seen uncappers, but they haven't involved water.

John: The knives of the uncapper are heated by water. There are also electric ones available as well, but the knives have a hollow construction and they have hot water plumbed through them. That helps cut the wax, but it really helps the wax and the honey not get plugged up and clogged on the knife. It just glides off easily.

Jeff: There's also chain uncappers?

John: Chain uncappers, I feel like they've become less popular lately. They chop up the cappings quite a bit and make frothy honey. The chain uncappers, there are two styles. There's one that you lower a frame individually, one at a time into the uncapper. Then there's the Dakota Gunness-style uncapper where it's like a conveyor belt, you feed them through. The Dakota Gunness style is pretty popular in the commercial world, but it's not really practical for most sideliners. Is a pretty expensive machine.

Jeff: One of the considerations when going to an uncapper that beekeepers would need to take into account is the need to have the cappings extended beyond the edges of the frame of honey. If they're running 10 frames in a 10-frame box, then those cappings are often a little bit even in line with the side of the frame or just a little bit above and it makes that uncapping process a little bit more challenging, especially for a knife. You're sitting there spending more time fixing what the uncapper didn't catch as opposed to just putting it in the extractor. That is a consideration then to make sure if you're running 10 frame, to run 9 frames in that 10-frame box to get that a little deeper?

John: Yes. We encourage people using the oscillating knife uncappers to do just that, to make the combs thicker. Doesn't always work out. The honey flow doesn't always play along and you don't get the big combs,. If you do, you can just slice the cappings off and there's very little hand scratching that needs to be done after it goes through the uncapper.

Becky: You can also do eight frames too. 8 frames in a 10-frame box.

John: You can do 8 in a 10 if you want really big combs.

Jeff: Let's hear from one of our sponsors. We'll come right back because we're right in the middle of the uncapping process and I want to keep going. We'll be right back.

[music]

Bee Smart Designs: Introducing the Bee Smart universal hive system. Whether you're a beginner or an experienced beekeeper, our innovative American-made products help you maintain healthier hives with lower losses and increased honey yields made from recycled materials with more insulation. Our system includes insulated tops and inner covers, pest management, bottom boards, plus feeders, and a full line of cool tools. Bee Smart products come ready to use with 8 or 10-frame equipment, no painting needed. Visit beesmartdesigns.com to learn more and to find a dealer near you. Bee Smart designs, simply better beekeeping products.

Becky: Welcome back, everybody. John, I'm getting nervous because my dining room's not going to hold all this equipment.

John: [laughs]

Becky: Seriously, if I'm planning a separate honey house, is there a minimum square footage that I need in order to have a dedicated space? Then also I'm getting a sense from this conversation that I'm not going to be googling this information, but I'm going to be actually calling you, or people are going to be calling professionals to get help with that. Is that what you help people do?

John: It definitely helps to talk through it with somebody, especially other people who have done it, other beekeepers because you'll learn some of the pitfalls and see what they've been through. It's hard to give a one-size-fits-all space for the process because it really depends on what equipment you plan to use. At a minimum, you would need an uncapping tank that's, say, 6 feet long and an extractor that's about 3 feet in diameter. The rest of the space would be for handling your supers and your honey and whatever else is going on in there, your wax. I think at a bare minimum, probably 12 by 12 is probably reasonable. If you're looking to grow or if you want to put in an extracting line, you need to think about what size that machinery is. We haven't even talked about that yet, putting in a whole extracting line. That is something that's become quite common these days.

Jeff: We left off at the uncapper. What can be one of the most challenging aspects of honey processing is what to do with all of those wax uncappings or what do you do with the uncapped wax in the honey that collects in the uncapping tank? How is that handled as you move up from hobbyist to sideliner?

John: Usually a hobbyist can get by, by just letting the honey settle and taking the wax off the top or letting the cappings drip through a strainer. Then you can let the bees rob it out or you can melt it down and double boiler or something like that. When you're getting into having hundreds of pounds of cappings wax, you need something better to process it. Many beekeepers will still just let the cappings drip for several days and try to get as much honey out of them as you can. The wax pressers and extruders are quite popular these days. We sell a lot of the Lyson extruders. They take those wet cappings, squeeze all the honey out and leave you with dense wax. It gets the honey out. You have wax that you can set aside and process later.

Actually melting the wax down there are different ways to do that. If you want to clean the wax to make candles, most people will use a boiling water wax processor from Lyson or Maxant. That's what we do here at Betterbees. When all the extracting is done, the supers are out of there, and the honey is bottled or put into pails, we take all the wax from the extruder and put it through the wax processor. That makes big old bricks of wax that we can then store indefinitely at that point.

Jeff: Is the extruder a device or a machine? Is it in line or do you have to scrape it out of your tank and then put it in the extruder and press a switch or turn a crank to press it out?

John: Either way, actually. The way we set it up here is the extruder sits under the uncapper. Right as the cappings come off the frames, they drop into the extruder. The extruder is running all the time. You can also do it as a post-process. You can take the cappings out of your uncapping tank, shovel them into the extruder, and just occasionally refill it and it'll sit there slowly churning through the wax. It's like a fruit press sort of, just sits there and cranks it out.

Jeff: We've uncapped, we've taken care of the cappings, the honey from the uncapper that can be mixed in with your extractor honey?

John: Yes. The ideal way to do that is to actually plumb them all together. That's another thing we haven't talked about yet. As a hobbyist, you're generally catching the honey in a pail, you might be putting it through a double sieve as you extract. When you're processing more honey, you definitely don't want to be dealing with a double sieve because it will plug way too quickly. You really should get away from lifting all these pails up over shoulder height or wherever you're taking them. You can set up a sump that catches all the honey, a sump or a clarifier. Your extracted honey and your uncapper honey can both drain into that same sump. Then you connect a pump to that sump and transfer it to a holding tank, to barrels, to pails, or wherever you're storing it. That takes a lot of the work out of it and it basically automates the process.

Jeff: That 9-foot by 10-foot space is getting pretty crowded at this point.

Becky: [laughs]

John: Yes. We should talk about tanks too. You have to think about what will you do with the honey after it comes out of the extractor. Are you planning to filter it or do you want to settle it? I think using a large settling tank is the most practical for this size of operation. The wax floats to the surface and you get clean honey just by using gravity to separate your honey. You can buy a big cylindrical tank from us or you can buy a big used milk tank, a bulk tank from a dairy farm. Those are very popular. I think pretty much every honey house I've been to has one of those in it. A day or two of settling will do most of the filtering for you and you don't have the headache of dealing with a filter.

If you can heat that tank, that helps as well. You don't have to heat it though, you can just settle it at whatever temperature you're extracting at. Then what do you plan to do with the honey after it settles? Are you storing it in pails or do you want to go straight to bottles? I think most people at this size will put it into pails for long-term storage, but it doesn't hurt to bottle up a whole bunch of it as well. Get that out of the way as soon as you can.

Becky: Quick question. When we're doing the sump and putting it into the tanks, is there a heat process at that time for the honey? Is it being heated?

John: The sumps are often heated. The sump is supposed to act as a clarifier too, so some of the wax will float to the top of the sump, and heating that tank does help that process. However, the honey goes through the sump pretty quickly. If you're running say two 30-frame extractors into it, the honey is not in there very long, so it really doesn't get much of a chance to heat up. It is heated or you can get them heated but the honey goes in and out pretty quickly.

Becky: Then in the bottling tanks, are those heated or do you heat them? Does that make sense? Is it a separate function to heat them or can you buy them with a heating function so that the honey doesn't crystallize?

John: Yes. You can heat your honey before you bottle it. Some people will not heat it and consider it raw. I think the technical definition of raw is that you've never heated it at all, but if you're only heating it to 100 degrees, the honey might get that hot in a hive anyway, so I wouldn't really worry about heating my honey up to 100 degrees. If you heat it some, it'll crystallize more slowly for sure in storage.

Jeff: I'm just envisioning the new honey house we're designing here, bring the supers in into a warm room, and then you bring them out as a stack, I assume, to the uncapping machine. You uncap them and either hang them there on the uncapper or put them in the extractor, spin them for 15 or 20 minutes total, provided the room is warm or the honey is warm.

Becky: Or just 10 minutes, it was 5 minutes of playing around.

John: Yes, 10 to 15 should do it most of the time.

Jeff: The uncapper is going to be where we catch the cappings. Those will go from the extractor to the sump. From the sump it's pumped to the storage tank or settling tank which could be also a bottling tank.

John: Yes, you pump it into a tank and then that tank is serving two purposes. It's the short-term storage for your honey, but you're also doing that settling process. Then from there, you can connect it to a bottling machine if you want to bottle honey or you can pour it directly into pails, whichever you prefer.

Jeff: Okay. I'm thinking about this through going to the bottling standpoint. Most of the beekeepers want to strain their honey at some point. Even if they're selling raw honey, they want to take most of the bee parts and chunks of wax and everything else. Those should come out in the settling tank. Is that correct? Those should rise to the top.

John: Yes. Most of everything would either rise to the top or drop to the bottom. It doesn't hurt to put it through another strainer at this point though, especially because the wax is gone, so it'll flow through a strainer more readily. You can add an intermediate step to strain the honey before you bottle it.

Jeff: John, this is quite an investment really, as we're looking at this. If you're spending hard-earned money on this, you want it to last long, you want it to last longer than a season. When a beekeeper is looking at this, they want to look at where they are today and where they want to be three to five years down the line. That's the depreciation of equipment. I guess you could talk to your tax person and figure out how long you want that to extend out to. Three to five years, I would assume, would that be a good way of looking at it?

John: Yes, that's probably a reasonable timeframe. It can be hard to predict how fast your operation will grow, but you just need to do your best to forecast where you think you'll be and maybe where you hope to be and plan around that. One of the most important things that we don't talk about enough is the space itself. If you already have a space, that's one thing, but if you don't have a space, working on that might be one of the best investments to make the process easier for you. Some people will even use a shipping container as a low-cost and permit-free way of setting up a new building at their site. Just buy a shipping container for $3,000 and outfit it. You can even put a whole extracting line in a shipping container. That's one way to do that without spending a whole lot.

Jeff: You had brought up extracting line before. Let's talk about what is an extracting line. I thought that's what we were talking about, but you make it sound like it's something separate.

John: An extracting line, what I mean by that is an uncapper and an extractor that are connected to each other. Usually, that means a horizontal extractor instead of a vertical radial extractor, that the extractor actually spins horizontally. The reason for that is the frames can go and they can slide directly from the uncapping machine right into the extractor. That eliminates one handling step of the frames. You'll put your frames into the uncapper, you either slide them across the uncapper or some uncappers or systems are automated and it pushes the frames for you and you push them right into the extractor, for example, 20 at a time, then you flip the extractor over and load in 20 more for a load of 40. Then when they're all done extracting, you push in new frames, and that pushes out the old frames.

Then you separate out 9 or 10 frames, place the super under them and pull out, and the frames drop right back into the super. Compared to hand loading a radial extractor and unloading the extractor, it's a lot less handling of the frames. People who are looking for a line, they're the ones usually who don't have as much help and/or are really limited in time. They want to extract as quickly as possible. Every minute counts and every handling step counts. You can run a line by yourself if you need to. You're not doing nearly as much lifting, generally.

Jeff: That would be welcomed [laughs].

John: Yes. On lifting you can even get a de-boxing machine which pushes the frames up out of the super. When we were at the Bee Expo in Louisville there, we had a Lyson line set up with a deboxer. That'll pop the frames right out, and then you just push them into the uncapper. You don't lift a frame again until it's back in the super. Once they're loaded into the uncapper, they're on their own with a little help from you, the operator, but you don't have to lift them again until they drop down into the super at the very end.

Becky: Do you have to release all the propolis seals or it's strong enough to just take care of it?

John: It's best to break the frames apart and free them from the box just with a hive tool.

Becky: Okay.

John: If you don't, the deboxer might do it, but they might hit the ceiling too because it'll build up enough pressure that they'll shoot right out the top.

[laughter]

John: Yes, I definitely recommend-

Becky: This's got dangerous [laughs].

John: -breaking them free.

Jeff: Yes. Don't stand above the boxes as the frames are being extracted.

John: Yes. Don't forget box scraping too at some point and top and bottom bar scraping. At some point in the process, you really should be scraping the top and bottom bars and scraping those boxes and the frame rests. That's often a neglected step. You want to have room to scrape the boxes before you put the frames back in them unless you don't care.

Becky: You're an engineer, so I'm 100% sure that you care, John [laughs].

John: Well, we won't talk about what I do at home.

Becky: No, really? I'm surprised [laughs]. That's interesting. It is an important cleanup. Then that wax is actually then used, you can add that wax to your gain, and then you also can use propolis if you're scraping propolis, right, that's your time you're going to collect propolis.

John: Yes.

Jeff: On an extracting line or a line like that, how long is that and is it a straight line or do they make it in an L or anything else?

John: Basically a straight line. The one that we sell is about 20 feet long with a deboxer. You really need a solid, 4 or 5 feet on each end of it. Building lengthwise, you need a minimum of 30 feet to comfortably have the line. The line itself is about 5 feet wide, but you need room on both sides of it. The inside of a trailer or a shipping container is the minimum you could get by with, 8 feet wide. Ideally, you'd have quite a bit more space in there.

Jeff: I think that would be ideal for many sideliners is to be able to put an extracting line with everything on in the extraction line into a trailer that could go from yard to yard, or even a club could buy it so members could rent it or borrow it. That would be ideal.

John: Yes. That's something to consider, too, for your business. If you're investing in this equipment, you might be able to do processing for other people. Might give you the incentive to get slightly better equipment or to put it in a trailer, go around and do other people's crops.

Jeff: I will do a shout-out or a nod out to a beekeeper I knew in Longmont, Colorado, Al Summers, and he did that. He had a very nice extracting line at his place. That's who did all my honey in Colorado. I would just take my boxes, he'd put them in the warm room. Then he would extract them and call me a couple of days later, say, "Come pick up your boxes and your pails of honey." He would basically just keep the wax and the uncapping wax as payment. That was ideal. That was the best-extracting line I could think of because I didn't have to touch it.

[laughter]

John: Yes. That's the way to do it if you've got a connection like that, for sure.

Becky: It's a lovely stream of income though too, especially if you're just building your business to figure out how you can have other people help pay for your improvement.

Jeff: I thought that was a wonderful model. Not only because I benefited from it, but from a business standpoint, because it did pay for his equipment. It did help him go to the next level of equipment and help other regional beekeepers or local beekeepers. He personally enjoyed the extracting process anyway. Shout-out to Al. That's really interesting to consider a prebuilt line as opposed to piecemealing in it. Those lines also include the sump and the clarifier and any pumps along the way, or is that--

John: Yes, the Lyson line that we sell comes with a sump, a pump, and an extruder, or you can also get it with a cappings auger or a spinner. Those are different ways to process the cappings. It's all preassembled and compatible with each other so you know it's going to work well. It's also built for a professional operation. It's more rugged steel. It's a pretty hefty machine. If you saw the one at the Bee Expo it's a heavy unit. It's meant for continuous operation by somebody who has many hundreds of hives or even thousands of hives. We've had plenty of people in the 200 to 500 hive range look at the lines for their operation.

Jeff: We won't go into pricing because I know that it's expensive and anybody looking at this would have to consider a serious investment in equipment. Of all of this we've talked about, what would be your prioritizing for us? What would be your first purchase, second purchase, third purchase?

John: My go-to answer for that would probably be the uncapper. I think an uncapper that you like and that makes that part easier. Also consider what part do you hate the most, or what part do you really want to make easier, because you might as well take care of that if you can. For a lot of people, that's the uncapping, so get a good uncapper. The extractor or extractors, you can always add another extractor, you can always get a bigger extractor. I think focusing on the uncapper is pretty important for most people.

Jeff: I think most people would probably go the other way around and get their extractor first. I like the idea of the uncapper because that is a time hog. That's an actual manual time hog as opposed to the extractors; just, you're waiting around.

Becky: Before you decide to invest, literally add up the number of hours that it takes you to do it the old way and figure out that maybe your time is worth a certain amount of dollars per hour. Just figure out how that could be used to invest in making it streamlined and making sure that instead of spending your whole summer extracting, you get to do other things with your time.

John: Definitely. Either other beekeeping things or perhaps you do other things in your life too.

Jeff: We've talked all about the honey house. You've given us some great insight designing our honey house and what we should go to. What are some of the common mistakes that you've seen beekeepers make or you've heard about or you've helped to rectify in your time helping folks?

John: Probably worrying too much about the extractor. That's not really a mistake, but it's just an oversight really, that there are other things to think about. I think a lot of people end up using a space that is really less than ideal. Either they have a door that they can't fit a big extractor through, that limits their extractor size-- We always post the diameters of the extractors on our website because everyone has a door that it has to fit through. Just having the right space. Doing it in the basement is not ideal. I've been to some places where I was uncapping honey inches away from a bookcase of hundreds of books-

Becky: Oh no [laughs].

John: -in somebody's basement. That's not ideal.

Becky: Plus, there's stairs involved [laughs].

Jeff: The stairs would be my dread, would be having the honey supers downstairs.

John: Ease of access is important. Really having power and water is huge. If this is an outbuilding or something, you definitely need the power. A lot of this equipment will run on 120 volts, but the bigger equipment needs 240 volts. You should plan ahead. If you're putting in an outbuilding, make sure you have plenty of circuits, both 240 and 120, and really, ideally, hot water as well because that'll allow you to clean up a lot more easily. Should talk about floors too, having a concrete floor or a linoleum floor, something that you can wash is huge compared to--

Jeff: Carpet.

John: Yes.

[laughter]

John: No carpet in the honey house. Concrete or something washable is great.

Becky: Those bees are going to be flying too. I mean, hopefully not too many of them, but a place for them to get out.

John: You need to be bee-tight, and you really want to be rodent-tight too, you need to keep the mice out of there. Most people will put a bee escape over a window so that whatever bees do get in there can get out through a bee escape.

Becky: Let's go back to bottling. We touched on it a little bit, but do you have any recommendations as far as how that happens in this entire process?

John: I think if you can it's great to have a dedicated spot for bottling. I know for me, if I don't have a space set up, it's a pain in the neck to set up a space to bottle. If I always have something going, that's nice. You don't really want a bottle at the same time you're extracting because there are bees flying around, there's bee poop and it's not the cleanest operation necessarily. Ideally, you have a separate little area for bottling that you can dedicate to that. You might have a little room off to the side of your extracting room, have a pipe going through the wall, and you have a smaller bottling tank in there. You have your empty jars of honey, your empty cases, and your full cases, and you can fill them up in there.

Jeff: Well, John, this is a big topic. I know we've only scratched the surface of it. There's so many different variables based on the beekeeper's direction, where they are in their operation, where they are in the country, their honey flows, if they're following the bloom and bringing it back, or if they're stationary, so many different variables. If someone had any specific questions, can they reach out to you to ask those? Do you provide that as a service?

John: Yes. I talk to people practically every day about their setup. I'm happy to chat with anyone. We have several people here who can do that too. It's an overwhelming amount of equipment that's available on the market. We're happy to work through that with you.

Becky: I assume that some people might do some mixing and matching and then the components are different scales or they don't maybe work well together, so it makes sense to get a professional.

John: Yes. We want to get you set up with the right stuff, and not steer you into something that's the wrong size or won't be compatible with your growth. We can help you out with that for sure.

Jeff: I'll be honest, what would really stump me would be the plumbing part. I shouldn't touch plumbing anyways, but plumbing in a honey house would just terrify me. I would have to farm that out completely.

John: Luckily most of the stuff we deal with connects by a common fitting; the tri-clamp or sanitary fitting. It's very easy. No threading or Teflon tape or anything. It just connects with gaskets, so that makes it pretty easy.

Jeff: Jeff-proof is what you're saying.

[laughter]

Jeff: John, this has been really fun. I've learned a lot. My mind is just racing with possibilities and questions and design ideas. We appreciate your time this afternoon to talk to us in this series on Upscaling from Hobbyist to Sideliner Beekeeper.

John: Thanks for having me. Hopefully, I didn't give any really bad advice.

[laughter]

John: Feel free to reach out if you have any questions.

[music]

Becky: No. Thank you for making a pretty complicated subject very clear and giving our listeners a really good guide to what to do next, and what to think about. Thanks, John.

John: Thank you.

Jeff: Well, that about wraps it up for this episode. Before we go, I want to encourage our listeners to follow us and rate us five stars on Apple Podcasts or wherever you download and stream the show. Even better, write a review and let other beekeepers looking for a new podcast know what you'd like. You can get there directly from our website by clicking on the Reviews tab along the top of any webpage. We want to thank Betterbee and our regular longtime sponsors, Global Patties, Strong Microbials, and Northern Bee Books for their generous support.

Finally, and most importantly, we want to thank you, the Beekeeping Today Podcast listener for joining us on this show. Feel free to leave us questions and comments on our website. We'd love to hear from you. Thanks a lot, everybody.

[music]

[00:47:28] [END OF AUDIO]