DEVELOPMENT OF AN EXTRACTOR FOR PROCESSING HONEY FROM INDIGENOUS HIVES AND NATURAL COLONIES

Abstract

Marigat in Baringo County is among the ASAL areas in Kenya where most residents engage in honey production as their major source of income. Honey producers in the area keep their bees in the indigenous hives and others occur in natural colonies. Traditional methods are mainly used to harvest and process honey in the area. This is because, the honey extractors available in the market cannot be used to extract honey from indigenous hives and natural colonies, due to lack of frame attachment to the combs that firmly secure them during extraction. Therefore, this research aimed at developing an extractor with honeycomb net buckets within the system to firmly secure honeycombs harvested from these hives and colonies. The extractor operates on the principle of radial motion of the net buckets loaded with mature honeycombs. The main purpose of the bearings attached to the horizontal shaft was to reduce friction on the parts to ensure smooth rotation. The net buckets were spun to rotational motion manually. The centrifugal force so created, triggers the flow of honey out of the comb cells onto the extractor wall. As the rotation continues with increase in centrifugal force, the rate of honey outflow increases until the combs were empty. This paper focused on obtaining the experimental results with five (5) men operating the extractor alternatively for a period of 8 minutes each. A total of five (5) test runs were achieved during extraction which was equivalent to 40 minutes. From the experimental results, the mass flow rate of honey obtained from calculations was found to be equivalent to 5.99×〖10〗^(-3) kg/s. The extractor was also found to be 99.83 % efficient in the extraction of honey.