Author Topic: Honey spinning method  (Read 7765 times)

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omnimirage

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Honey spinning method
« on: January 17, 2018, 06:22:57 pm »
I've recently purchased a good quality 20 frame radial honey extractor. I'm seeking to learn the most efficient way of using this thing.

I haven't got a hot knife yet. Is there anything I should be looking for when purchasing such?

I have an old fridge that I use as an insulation unit, it has an old small oil heater. I'm under the impression that, if I place my honey supers in there beforehand to warm up, that it'd make the spinning easier. Is there any temperature range I should be setting it to?

Since it's radial, I can spin it in either direction. I assume that, much like a car, it'd be bad for the gears if I have it going quickly in one direction, and then reverse the engine to get it to spin the other direction. When using it, I've been basically stopping the spinning before spinning it the other direction. I've noticed that, if I turn off the engine, it stops spinning faster than if I simply put the spinning at 0, neutral not spinning in either direction. I'm not sure how cautious I should be, how much I need to wait for it to stop.

I've learned that the comb can easily be damaged in these things. What are some practices that I can do to minimise comb damage when spinning?

The extractor has a honey gate on the bottom. I figure it'd be best to then place a sieve, honey strainer underneath, sitting on top of a honeybucket with a honeygate on it, so that it goes straight from the extractor and strains into the bucket.

I'm really unsure what I should do with the sticky frames after spinning. If I just leave them out in my shed, I'll have exposed honey constantly which will invite animals to feast upon it, like bugs and maybe even mouses. I read that it's common for people to store frames in freezers, but my freezer simply does not have the space to store such.

Offline Bakersdozen

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Re: Honey spinning method
« Reply #1 on: January 17, 2018, 06:54:10 pm »
.


The extractor has a honey gate on the bottom. I figure it'd be best to then place a sieve, honey strainer underneath, sitting on top of a honeybucket with a honeygate on it, so that it goes straight from the extractor and strains into the bucket.

I'm really unsure what I should do with the sticky frames after spinning. If I just leave them out in my shed, I'll have exposed honey constantly which will invite animals to feast upon it, like bugs and maybe even mouses. I read that it's common for people to store frames in freezers, but my freezer simply does not have the space to store such.

I can't answer your other questions because they are out of my league.
Yes, under the extractor gate, I would place honey buckets topped with strainers.  I use the double strainers.  They nest together and straddle a bucket.  I would use a honey bucket, for collecting the strained honey, that also has a gate if possible.  I am lazy and lifting a 60#  regular bucket of honey and pouring it into a bucket with a gate is beyond my abilities.  So I always collect the strained honey in buckets with gates.  Yes, this costs more.

I always put wet frames back on the hives.  They will clean them up and make the comb pretty again. The bees will take any remaining honey down for their stores.  After a few days I remove them and store them until the next nectar flow.  I stack them so there are no gaps then I put a solid lid on of some type.  You can treat your stored comb to keep the wax moths from hatching.  BT works well. (Do a search on this forum to find out more about BT. ) Most the time I use moth crystals with Paradichlorbenzene.  DON'T USE MOTH BALLS.  The active ingredient is something different.  On a stack of 4-5 supers, lay a layer of newspaper on top.  Place a tablespoon or two of the crystals then put a lid on this.  Before using the supers again, let air out for a day or two before placing on the hives.

omnimirage

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Re: Honey spinning method
« Reply #2 on: January 17, 2018, 10:00:12 pm »
I currently don't have any hives within a short traveling distance to where I am. I could establish a few at my home, I might be establishing a new site sometime that's just 15 or so minutes away which I could use. I don't think I'd be able to set up more than a few beehives at my home, though I'd imagine that'd be all I'd need for them to clean up the stickiness. I suppose I'd use a queen excluder huh.

Offline apisbees

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Re: Honey spinning method
« Reply #3 on: January 17, 2018, 11:33:29 pm »
I didn't want to post until after you had. I sent Omni a PM about this extractor that was close to his location. The way it was listed in the Ebay ad did not revel its true potential. Ebay Ad
https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/8-Frame-Electric-Honey-Extractor-/253338383306?hash=item3afc24f3ca%3Ag%3A7oAAAOSw88xaSKxr&nma=true&si=LkPGAJ4BsI77YPAbsg8Htpd6mMk%253D&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2557
It was listed as an 8 frame. When I first seen it I was thinking the price was to high for an 8 frame but after thinking about the extractor and the 2 poor picture that didn't really show much, something did not add up. I went back in and looked at it again. I ended up looking at the reflection of the basket in the reflection off the stainless steel to figure out what it was. Then did a search on the lega site to get the specs.
I seen it is a 20 frame Dadant, or a 8 frame Langstroth. but you can place 12 Dadants between the 8 Langs so if you are running a combination of frames you can run full extractor loads of 20 frames.
http://www.redpaths.com.au/products/honey-extractors/?productdtl=4788

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omnimirage

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Re: Honey spinning method
« Reply #4 on: January 18, 2018, 12:25:53 am »
Yeah it's a really good quality spinner. The lady who sold it expressed that it wasn't good for her, as she uses wax foundation and it spun too fast to keep her foundation in one piece, so it's seemingly more or less a brand new spinner.

Offline apisbees

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Re: Honey spinning method
« Reply #5 on: January 18, 2018, 07:05:01 am »
The bucket strainers will be to restrictive in draining the honey as it flows out of the extractor. You will be spinning out 60 to 80 lbs every 20 minutes. For this year until you can get set up with sumps and pumps, you will have to poor honey from one pail to another. But lets start at the beginning.
Extracting honey on a medium scale.
Honey flows out of the frames much easier when it is warm. if you can keep the honey at hive brood nest temperature it flows the best with out causing any degradation of the honey. This can be done in several ways, Heat the whole honey house, a lot of power or gas and you are left working in an extremely hot environment. Hot room, hot closet, hot box, an confined area that you can place the supers to be heated. It should be sized to meet the extraction capacity so you can continue extracting and not have to wait for more supers to warm. On a small scale with out space for a dedicated hot area, an easy way to achieve this is by using a 60 watt indecent light bulb in a trouble light as a heat source. Place a super pallet or a light hive cover on the floor for a drip tray. Suspend the trouble light in a empty super making sure the bulb is protected from drips as a drip of honey on the hot bulb could cause it to shatter. Then stack your honey supers on top and put on a lid to keep in the heat. You can make as many stacks as you need to meet your extraction needs. In 24 to 36 hr the honey in the stack will be 35 deg C. and ready to extract.

Uncapping, It is nice to have an automatic uncapper but it is not the only way to go, a uncapping knife is slow and I have found that just raking the cappings with a cappings scratcher will do the job quickly. Here is a video of a friend that uses a scratcher to uncap for his 60 frame extractor. Don't worry about the wax, it will come out in the extractor.


Loading frames. Assess the frames as you are uncapping and loading them into the extractor It the frame is broke fix it have a few extra bottom bars and a few frame nails to repair the frames and if the wax is not attached to the bottom bar, which happens more often when the beekeeper tries to go foundationless. If the wax is not attached to the bottom bar well or you broke that connection fixing a frame, put some rubber bands to keep the combs in place. By next extraction the bees will have attached them. Try to keep the extractor balanced but with deep frames spaced out evenly between shallow frames.

Extracting. For get the extractor even has a reverse. This would only be needed if you had the 4 tangent racks (sold separately) used to extract European over sized frames or Heather honey that is thixotropic. For use as a radial, one direction is fine and it doesn't matter which direction. Start off at the slowest speed and run at this speed for a good 5 minutes, this will get most the bulk of the weight of honey out of the frames. After you can slowly increase the speed one step at a time letting the extractor run for a minute before advancing to the next speed setting, till you hit top speed Then I would let it run for another 5 minutes. You can gauge by looking at the rate and frequency the honey is hitting the extractor side. There is a point where the amount of honey coming out of the frames is not worth the electricity being used to run the extractor. Or your time waiting to load the next batch of frames. If the comb looks like it is not well attached and supported I might be hesitant to put it in top speed.

Honey flow from the extractor. During the extraction the honey is wiped through the air causing it to cool rapidly. Straining at this time will be a slow process. The honey flow slowly when cool and the wax clogs the screens. I would suggest using a modified system of what commercial operations use. I assume that you are using 20 liter buckets for honey storage and bottling. With this in mind and as I stated above, Still don't worry about the wax Let the wax and honey fill your raw bulk honey buckets. To strain the honey you want to warm it back up to hive temperature. At 35 deg. the honey will flow through the strainers like water, and while the honey is warming back up, the wax is floating up to the surface. So over the same light that you used to heat the supers place a couple of sticks to place the pails of raw honey on, make a box to go around them and a lid on top to keep the heat in. This can be empty supers or a wood or Styrofoam box. the next day the honey will be warm the wax will be concentrated on the top of the honey making it easy to remove most of the wax by skimming it of the top then pouring the warm honey with little wax left through the filter screen.

The wax will still have honey in it as well as some honey scooped up during the skimming off the wax. Dump this into a bucket that you have drilled some 5mm holes in the bottom. Using the same light heat source Place the cappings in the box and let the honey drip out into a catch bucket.

As a hobbyist they want to pull, extract, filter, package, and get things clean up in one day. I understand this, but in doing so they are fighting cool honey, and suspended bees wax that clogs screens. I suggest a way to getting the honey flowing in your favor with a little warmth. It is easier on the comb and on the nerves. It is so much easier straining honey when you can pick up the bucket of honey and poor it through the strainer in one go, than having to keep pouring a little in and waiting for it to flow through. 
 
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Offline apisbees

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Re: Honey spinning method
« Reply #6 on: January 18, 2018, 07:20:33 am »
Yeah it's a really good quality spinner. The lady who sold it expressed that it wasn't good for her, as she uses wax foundation and it spun too fast to keep her foundation in one piece, so it's seemingly more or less a brand new spinner.

I would question her method of using the extractor. She also was selling it as an 8 frame so I would assume that she is running only deeps. Even if you only had deep frames to extract I would place empty Dadants in the empty spaces between the deeps it will reduce turbulence in the extractor which will exert excess force on the side of the frames. Also many fail to realize the importance of the honey in the frames being warm as to allowing the honey to flow more readily. It the comb is not attached to the bottom bar  then you need to get it supported so it doesn't flop sideways.
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Offline SmokeyBee

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Re: Honey spinning method
« Reply #7 on: January 18, 2018, 04:55:02 pm »
Very informative, thank you for taking the time to type this out.

omnimirage

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Re: Honey spinning method
« Reply #8 on: January 19, 2018, 11:06:26 pm »
Fantastic post thanks a lot apisbees.

I already have an old freezer that I put an oil heater inside, which will be able to fit about half a dozen honey supers inside.

Interesting that the cappings scratcher is quicker than the knife.

What would happen if a not so stable frame gets put on at full speed? Can it damage the extractor?

I'm using 27 litre buckets.

Very interesting about pouring the honey directly into a bucket, then reheating it before straining again. With the the bucket that I place the cappings in, with the 5ml holes on the bottom, should I put some sort of screen filtering on the bottom of this?

Does make sense about using heaters, I've learned the frustrating way of trying to do crush and strain without a heat source. I'd imagine the stronger the flow of honey, the more the strainer will simply get clogged.

It was her first electric extractor, she very well may not have really known what she was doing.


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Re: Honey spinning method
« Reply #9 on: January 21, 2018, 01:13:33 am »
"I already have an old freezer that I put an oil heater inside, which will be able to fit about half a dozen honey supers inside."
That is only 3 extractor loads. On a super pallet I will stack 6 Deeps or 9 Mediums and you can have more than one stack Just need another trouble light with a 60 watt bulb. do not use anything stronger as it will produce to much heat and will melt the comb.

"What would happen if a not so stable frame gets put on at full speed? Can it damage the extractor?"
Always start the extractor on the slowest speed. It just takes the wax out of the frame. and some times will flop onto the adjacent frame and can take the wax out of that frame also. Miss uncapping one side of a frame and it will break out also. You just end up with big pieces of wax comb in the bottom of the extractor. It is jest the less damaje done to the combs during the extraction means the less time the bees will need to spend repairing it before refilling.

"Very interesting about pouring the honey directly into a bucket, then reheating it before straining again. With the the bucket that I place the cappings in, with the 5mm holes on the bottom, should I put some sort of screen filtering on the bottom of this?"
The 5 mm holes are the screen.
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omnimirage

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Re: Honey spinning method
« Reply #10 on: January 22, 2018, 04:42:29 am »
Do I need to spin the frames in both directions, in order to spin out the honey in both sides of the frame?

Surprised that just 5mm holes is a sufficient screen. I'm wanting to make lipbalm, having now know that beeswax collectes a build up of chemicals, I think I'll use the beeswax from the capping for my lipbalm since it should be the most clean that I'll have available to.

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Re: Honey spinning method
« Reply #11 on: January 22, 2018, 11:04:20 am »
Forget the extractor even has a reverse. This would only be needed if you had the 4 tangent racks (sold separately) used to extract European over sized frames or Heather honey that is thixotropic. For use as a radial, one direction is fine and it doesn't matter which direction.
I would put lots of holes every 15mm apart. The holes need to be small enough to hold back the wax bet not get plugged shut with the wax.
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Re: Honey spinning method
« Reply #12 on: January 27, 2018, 02:54:02 pm »
apis- well stated !
Omni- i find this double strainer does a great job. the top strainer is more coarse & catches a lot of wax. the lower strainer is 500 micron & catches most everything else. i extracted over 50 medium supers & only had to clean the strainer once.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Stainless-Steel-Beekeeping-Double-Honey-Sieve-Strainer-Filter-Apiary-Equip-Tool/192415668234?epid=8012357833&hash=item2cccde180a:g:dDcAAOSwc2FaSzJh

omnimirage

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Re: Honey spinning method
« Reply #13 on: January 27, 2018, 07:40:19 pm »
I actually already have one of those double strainers! How do you clean it? I'm under the impression that it's best not to clean it in a kitchen sink, due to the wax will clog up the pipes and create problems. I've been finding it difficult to properly clean it, I've poured boiling water on it, pocked it with chop sticks, I even used a torch to melt the wax away (which worked but concerned it'll cause structure damage to the metal over time).

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Re: Honey spinning method
« Reply #14 on: January 28, 2018, 08:49:16 am »
When I use mine I always find boiling water cleans it up nicely.
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Re: Honey spinning method
« Reply #15 on: January 28, 2018, 09:19:23 am »
I use a hose with a spray nozzle outside to clean this & the nylon bucket strainers. I 1st spray from the bottom up to dislodge the wax & rinse the honey. with enough pressure I've never had to resort to heat. afterwards I rinse them with warm water in the kitchen. most things related to beekeeping are best done outside the house & especially the kitchen. that includes making syrup & candy. I've seen videos of people on you tube who are extracting honey & processing wax in their kitchens & wondered what the aftermath was like. using a torch on stainless steel will cause it to eventually rust. I made the mistake of torching some queen excluders & now they've rusted. I now put those in the freezer. once frozen I can slam them flat on my driveway & most the wax & propise falls off. I finish them off with a wire brush.

omnimirage

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Re: Honey spinning method
« Reply #16 on: February 07, 2018, 08:57:12 pm »
The wire brush sounds very useful. What sort of shape do you use?

How do you guys clean your extractor? Best I can think of is pouring boiling water from my kettle, but that'd be quite slow because my kettle only holds a litre of water.


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Re: Honey spinning method
« Reply #17 on: February 07, 2018, 09:21:56 pm »
...How do you guys clean your extractor?...
I set the extractor outside and let the bees clean up the honey.  At the same time, I set a garden hose (with water in it) out in the sun.  The solar heated water, via a sprayer, cuts the remaining honey film pretty quickly.  If you run out of hot water, wait until the water gets hot again and repeat.  JMO
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omnimirage

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Re: Honey spinning method
« Reply #18 on: February 07, 2018, 09:33:09 pm »
Isn't sharing honey like that bad for disease management? I believe such is recommended against by the Australian biosecurity department. Furthermore, I don't know why but here the bees are slow to rob, I've left out strainers sticky with honey in front of bee hives before and they've mostly ignored it. Seems like the flow is too strong here that they don't care to rob. Could be because I seem to have German Black Bees rather than Ligurians.

Interesting trick with the garden hose! I don't have a hose fitting that lets me contain the water, it just freely runs out of the hose whenever I turn the tap on but I could buy something that'd do such. Still, that'd only work in the summer.

Offline Lburou

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Re: Honey spinning method
« Reply #19 on: February 07, 2018, 10:10:50 pm »
Feeding your own honey (from hives that show NO sign of disease) is okay. Feeding honey from an unknown honey source is a no-no.

You can skip the robbing step.  Sometimes bees take a while to discover the extractor and rob it out.  Your flow will make all the difference in robbing activity.  :)
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Re: Honey spinning method
« Reply #20 on: February 08, 2018, 05:58:27 am »

How do you guys clean your extractor? Best I can think of is pouring boiling water from my kettle, but that'd be quite slow because my kettle only holds a litre of water.

I set my extractor outside and let the bees clean up any small amounts.  If there is a lot left over, they can drown in the honey.  Once that is done, I carry buckets of hot soapy water outside to the extractor.  I turn the crack and splash water all around.  I then repeat with clean hot water, turn upside down and let air dry.  I have some sharp surfaces inside my extractor, so I am very careful about scrubbing surfaces by hand.

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Re: Honey spinning method
« Reply #21 on: February 08, 2018, 12:56:40 pm »
Boiling water will melt the wax and then it will be solidified on the surfaces, use warm water less than 130F. deg to rinse any wax partials away.
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omnimirage

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Re: Honey spinning method
« Reply #22 on: March 16, 2018, 06:42:44 am »
The bees often never fully cap a frame. Honey from a non-capped cell, is from my understanding not complete honey, tends to have too high moisture content and can ferment.

When can I spin extract a frame that isn't fully capped? Someone told me that as long as 80% of the frame is capped then you're okay but I'm not sure if that's true.

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Re: Honey spinning method
« Reply #23 on: March 16, 2018, 11:16:29 am »
yes, 80 % or a little less. you can do a shake test if you don't have a refractometer. take the frame give it a hard shake face down. if anything fly's out, i don't extract it. too high in moisture.
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