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Buildings on the farm took on names that most aptly described their function. The root cellar could be counted on to have "roots" in it of various varieties. The chicken house would of course have to do with chickens. The big gray building down the slop from the rest of the farm buildings was no exception. True to form, it was named the "bee-house". This was a grand old four level structure with a bounteous history. Honey was hauled from the bee yards on an old two ton Chevy truck with a 14 foot grain box and hydraulic lift gate. We’d maneuver the usually heavily laden truck into the dock on the back side of the building by the scale room. Stacks of supers sometimes 6 high would first be wheeled from the truck onto the scale to be weighed, and then into the hot room for preheating. In the height of the summer and fall season, the bee-house would always be a-buzz.

There were usually two and sometimes three small crews at work either on the farm or in the bee yards. During extracting season, my father would usually do the extracting or some "livestock" management out in the yards with the small pick-up truck. My brother, John, would head up the harvesting crew that would remove the suppers from the colonies. My mother and sister-in-law, Karen, usually tended to the bottling of honey, cleaning and boxing of comb-honey or helped with the extracting. This way, the process went on pretty much continuously during that peak season. Jobs weren’t carved in stone though and everybody got the chance to trade off on occasion.

A day in the bee-house usually started with the cleaning of equipment and getting the heating systems up and running. Operating this "processing plant" took a little finesse, so either my father or brother were essential to the process. In the later years, I was able to run the plant. Supers were wheeled out of the hot-room and placed by the Cowen uncapper. This machine used two liquid heated reciprocating knives to cut the caps off the cells on the combs. Its chain drive made easy work of the uncapping process. You loaded several frames at a time into its in-feed and it would output them nicely uncapped onto a delivery rack. In the old days, you would take each individual comb and uncap them with hand held electrically heated knives. Even though you may handle as much as two tons of honey a day, you still couldn’t resist sampling it on occasion! The freshly uncapped combs were too inviting to resist.

On either side of the uncapper were two fifty frame radial extractors. In other words each extractor could hold fifty combs or about five suppers of honey to be extracted. These extractors used centrifugal force to spin the honey out of the combs. Combs would be taken from the uncapper, touched up, and then set into the extractors. A cycle of work revolved around the time needed to spin the honey out of its combs in the extractor. Normally, a person would be filling one extractor while the other one was spinning. It took two people minimum to run the machinery efficiently; one to feed the uncapper and watch the other processing equipment, and the other to load and unload the extractors and haul away the empties.

The extracting equipment, hot-room, and scale-room were on the first floor of the bee-house. The Honey from the extractors, and the wax from the uncapper would go down through an opening in the floor and into a heated trough system below in the basement. This honey wax mix would then be metered from the trough into a large centrifuge or honey separator. This machine would continuously separate out the wax from the honey using high speed revolving knives that cut the wax from inside the centrifuge's drum. The wax, dry as sawdust, would be shoveled from a bin under the separator into tins or buckets to eventually be melted down. The Honey was then pumped up to the second floor into one of three tanks, the largest of which was 1000 gallon. 55 gallon drums were then filled on the first floor, sealed, weighed, and readied for delivery to the bottling building (honey-house) or stored for later use or sale.

You may have noticed that I haven’t "waxed nostalgic" about this part of farm life (pun intended). In general this part of the process was icky, sticky, and hot. You were constantly bathed in water and honey. A few days spent at the extracting task rendered your hands nice and soft but without the protective callouses needed for other tasks. Again the best saving grace of this job was the trusty Philco radio on the shelf above the floor scale! That and seeing that wonderful golden fluid pouring out of those extractors!

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We actually handled the wax in a couple different ways. Our means of melting the wax had some limitations. It worked fine on clean wax such as uncappings or newer comb that had been cut from damaged frames etc. It didn’t work well however with the dark and heavy older brood combs with the high level of impurities they contained. We therefore kept the wax separate and sent out the dark cut comb to an outside source for rendering. This would be kept in 55 gallon barrels until enough was accumulated to warrant shipment. The rest of the wax was melted using a melter that had been in existence at least as long as I can remember. The wax uncappings in our process were outputted from a large centrifuge with high speed rotating knives that cut the wax from the inside of the rotating drum. This was a remarkable machine in that it yielded incredibly dry wax in a form almost like sawdust. It was easily shoveled from underneath the unit into plastic buckets and transported to the wax house.

The melter consisted of a tin lined wooden box about 5 foot long, 2 foot wide, and 18 inches high. It also had a tin lined wooden lid that was hinged to open to the side. This was on legs that put it at a good working height of perhaps 40 inches or so. A grid-work of steam heated tubing was suspended by chains so that its height from the melter's bottom could be adjusted. The use of steam was simple in that it was self-regulating as far as temperature was concerned. Steam was generated in a boiler that was nothing more than a steel tank that sat on an old gas cook range. It was probably inefficient as all get out but it actually worked quit well and was very trouble free. A weighted stopper on the top of the vessel acted as a relief valve. The spent steam was vented outside mostly condensed.

The melter also had a baffle toward the front that surrounded the outlet keeping the unmelted wax and impurities from clogging the outlet. The outlet itself was an odd type of pipe contraption that had a handle on the outside of the wax melter. When turned it tipped a pipe inside so that you could maintain the draw at the top of the melted wax in the baffled area regardless of its level. The whole construction of this ancient piece of equipment was beautifully simple but yet very effective.

Wax was added to the melter on top of the tubing grate. It was then left to melt and actually required only an occasional check to stir or add to its contents or add water to the steam generator. You also had to occasionally remove chunks of wood or wire. This was done with a dipper with small holes in it similar to that used in ice fishing to skim the slush out of the hole in the ice. The "slum" or sediment had to be removed from the bottom of the melter occasionally with the steam coils completely removed. The melter was located in its own little building (the wax-house) not 8 foot from the bee-house. This made the job of melting wax an easy task to do while extracting as you could keep tabs on the melter between extractors. Drawing down the melter did require closer attention though as you needed to adjust the handle and watch the containers that were being filled. This only needed to be done occasionally though. We used the old square 60 pound tin cans with the tops cut off for wax molds. The wax contracted enough so that nice stackable blocks of wax popped out of their molds with ease. These were then stored and sold at the most opportune time when prices were high.

As a child, any piece of string I could find around the place became a wick. I'd find an old nail or something to tie to the end so it would sink and begin dipping it into the can of melted wax. Hours were spent doing this and the crooked little candles it yielded seldom were of much use to anyone but myself. It did serve to keep me occupied and out from under my parent's feet though!

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