It’s been a long road but we’re getting close!

You may recall this post from last year about the grant we got for extraction equipment. Well, we’ve completed purchasing our equipment including the trailer pictured above.

We’ve got some work ahead of us to finish it up and we’ll have to spend a little more money but we should be able to deploy the trailer this season.

When we’re done with it the trailer will be a certified honey kitchen, so you’ll be able to extract and bottle your honey on board and sell it through retail outlets or farmers markets.

Some of the features include:

• It’s small – any vehicle with a trailer hitch can pull it
• It’s air conditioned – you’ll be able to use it in the summer without dying.
• It’s got state of the art equipment
  • Lyson Compact 20 frame extractor and uncapping tank
  • Honey pump, filter, and holding tanks
  • Honey bottling machine for quick precise bottle filling
  • Extract into holding tanks, bottling tanks, or buckets
• Sink with on board water or city water for clean up
• Generator or plug in for use in the field

Our idea with the trailer was to create an end to end extraction and bottling solution that could be set up anywhere. You could take it to your apiary or use it at home. You could collaborate with your friends to process everyone’s honey at once.

We’ll see how well it works in practice. I’m sure it will take a season or two to really get it down, but it should be a really great tool for anyone who wants to use it. One thing we will have to work out are the usage fees. We would like to compensate folks who are making the trailer available for other people to use and we would like to make sure that running it doesn’t cost the Guild unduly. Stay tuned.

We will have a couple events to show it off and we’ll have training classes for using it. If you want to use it independently, either for yourself or for a group, we will require you to take the training before you can borrow it.

But that’s not all!

Our grant did not JUST give us funds to set up the trailer, we’ve also gotten equipment to set up a high capacity stationary extraction line. This facility should be able to handle dozens to hundreds of supers with a high speed automated uncapper, wax press, dual extractors, clarifiers, pumps, holding tanks, bottling tanks, bottling machine, etc. The whole nine yards.

We’re not sure when we will get this facility set up though because we don’t currently have space for it. We are open to ideas and suggestions if you have space that we can use, or ideas about funding something like this.

This equipment should all be delivered by the end of April and if we can find somewhere to install it we should be able to use it next season.