From hive to home

Local beekeepers are working hard to produce pure, flavorful honey.
By ROBERT L. KURTZ
VINDICATOR CORRESPONDENT
It's the season for Mahoning Valley beekeepers to process and market their honey.
You see it in local grocery stores. You even buy it and spoon it into tea and smear it across biscuits. But, really -- how in the world do beekeepers get their honey from buzzing hives in the field into those clean, attractive jars?
The quick answer is through hard and caring labor. The first step is perhaps the most arduous. On warm days this time of year, beekeepers throughout the region can be spotted (and heard) hoisting heavy boxes full of honey from their hives to their trucks. The bees are shown to the door as beekeepers brush them off or blow them out. The bee boxes, called "supers," contain nine or 10 wooden frames that hold the weighty sheets of wax cells. A single honey-filled super can weigh as much as 50 pounds. The apiarist then transports them to his designated work area -- a garage, basement or outbuilding will do fine -- commonly known in bee jargon as the "honey house." That is where the orchestra of honey-extracting equipment creates its music.
Round and round
The beekeeper first employs a hot knife to remove the top wax layer -- called cappings -- from each frame to reveal the golden substance below. The frames are then carefully placed within the extractor until it is full.
The extractor is the heart and soul of the operation. Be it a tiny, hand-crank two-framer or an electric 70-frame behemoth, an extractor at its sticky heart is a centrifuge. It spins the frames around -- first slowly and then increasingly more quickly to avoid breaking the fragile wax -- and builds up sufficient velocity to eject the honey from the comb. The honey splatters against the extractor walls and settles into a golden pool at the bottom. Columbiana County beekeeper John Beilhart has a precise strategy for spinning his combs to avoid breakage. "I run my frames for four to five minutes on the slowest speed, then two minutes on medium speed and three minutes on the fastest," Beilhart says.
Extractor to bottle
Pumped from the extractor, the honey undergoes a thorough filtering process to separate it from wax cappings and detritus (blades of grass, etc.). As honey is a very heavy substance, the wax floats to the surface in no time. Most beekeepers with just a few hives simply let the honey settle in buckets, remove the top wax skein, and strain the honey through cheesecloth, which works very effectively.
Beekeepers who have large quantities of honey to clean often employ a piece of equipment known as a honey sump, a heated metal container the size of a small trunk, that sends the honey through a series of small compartments. This device both traps out most of the wax into chambers and also heats the honey to a temperature where it can be quickly and easily filtered through fabric for its final cleaning. The honey is then pumped to a storage tank -- often with yet another filter -- that contains a no-drip valve for easy bottling. Many beekeepers create their own honey labels and use the traditional thin honey bottles or even canning jars for bottling. They are also meticulous in maintaining the highest levels of cleanliness, producing a product that is crystal clear and ready for drizzling over biscuits and oatmeal.
Honey for sale
Local beekeepers market their honey in stores throughout the Valley. John Beilhart's honey is found in both the Salem and North Lima Giant Eagle. Canfield beekeeper Roger Henry provides his honey exclusively to White House Fruit Farm.
White House owner Debbie Hull -- a big fan of Henry's product -- states, "A lot of the nectar from Roger's honey comes from our own apple orchards -- it's almost our own product. And it's always fresh. Sometimes when he delivers his honey, it's still warm."
Poland apiarist John Kulifay doesn't even need to walk out his Struthers Road front door to find buyers. "We sell honey through our home," Kulifay says, "We have a considerable amount of repeat customers, and most of our new customers have been referred to us."
Occasionally there is more than one kind of local honey available. Keeping an eye on flowers, weather, and the bees, an adept beekeeper can capture specific types of honey. "Specialty honeys such as buckwheat and pumpkin can be as dark as coal," beekeeper Kulifay states. "As a general rule, the darker the honey is, the stronger its flavor will be. It's always a good idea to sample different kinds of honey and compare their unique flavors."
And honey is not the only salable byproduct of beekeeping. The wax from the uncapping process is set aside, melted down, and cleaned to produce both stick and molded candles that quickly get snatched up. Some local apiarists, like John Beilhart, also produce a popular beeswax-based hand cream and lip balm.
Beekeeping has become an increasingly rigorous pursuit, with an array of pests depleting bee populations. Want to help out your heroic local beekeeper? Next time you find yourself in the honey aisle of your favorite supermarket, do yourself and the regional economy a favor and ask the manager, "Do you have any local?"
XInterested in beekeeping? Contact John Kulifay in Poland at (330) 536-8365 or John Beilhart in Columbiana at (330) 482-6039.