Difficulties straining honey; clogged sieve

[omnimirage]

I've been processing my honey using the crush and strain method. I've bought a metal honey sieve from ebay, and it often gets clogged with honey, and I need to stop the straining, clean everything and then repeat. It's coming to be very inefficient and time consuming.

The other day I went to finish straining some honey. A little bit of glump fell of the side of the honey, and I had another bucket that I had a minimal amount of honey in it with too much wax on top, so I mixed the buckets, and went to strain about 20 liters of more or less pure honey, and half way through the sieve got clogged up. I put it in a fridge at 38 celesius, and I stired where it got clogged, which helped minimally, but now there's a thick layer of honey that won't go through. I now need to tip out the honey that didn't go through, clean it all, and repeat, which takes well over an hour; just to sieve half a bucket of honey! I've noticed that stirring it helps, but I can't stir it too much as it turns into creamed honey.

I'm really lost as to what to do, my method absolutely sucks and is not working. I remember the man who taught me beekeeping, used a different kind of sieve; his was made out of fabric that you wrapped around the bucket. I tried to buy one of these, but couldn't find what they were called and where to buy them from.

Has anyone got any suggestions?

[Perry]

Heat! When I have strained honey, the difference between 97 F and 102 F is like night and day. At 97 F my double strainer would plug up, but 5 F warmer and it flows through easy. I try to keep my honey no warmer than it might be found in the hive during a hot spell.

[riverbee]

what perry said HEAT!

"I remember the man who taught me beekeeping, used a different kind of sieve; his was made out of fabric that you wrapped around the bucket. I tried to buy one of these, but couldn't find what they were called and where to buy them from."

omni, are you referring to one of these?  this is not a sieve.
BUCKET BLANKET

i use this to heat 5 gallon pails:
FIVE GALLON PAIL HEATER

[Wandering Man]

Would a paint strainer work?

http://www.thepaintstore.com/Trimaco_Elastic_Top_Paint_Strainer_25_Pack_p/11511.htm?gclid=Cj0KEQjwzd3GBRDks7SYuNHi3JEBEiQAIm6EI6M0isJ39Zmm1Mka84zgbUTGo1zXkoN-iPA7qybg75IaAiXc8P8HAQ

Seems like I remember a friend telling me he uses these.

[Perry]

No matter what it is you are using as a filter, the trick is temperature.

[omnimirage]

It's interesting to hear that 5f makes that much of a difference! My mentor told me to heat it to 102f, no hotter than it will get inside the hive he said. My heating application has been a bit unpredictable, sometimes it's went up to 104f and because of so, I've been setting it so that the temperature is more at 97-102, figuring it's best for it to be slightly under ideal temperature than slightly over, but maybe this isn't the best way to go about it?

Not those riverbee, was meant for actually straining.

Paint strainers can work, I've used them quite a bit in the past but ended up not using them anymore, they can't strain straight honey, it just gets stuck in the strainer-bag which turns into a mighty mess to deal with. I never used a heat application for it, which might make the difference. I think paint strainers work best for convenience when straining low amounts of honey, anything over a few liters/a galleon then I'd suggest using something else.

I ended up putting the creamy stuff back in the bucket, heating the whole bucket again, putting it back through the strainer, and I've winded straight back where I was again: honey that's too thick to go through the sieve. Not sure if I should just put the honey back in the bucket and reheat. I'm bothered by this not only because of how long and ineffective it is, but also concerned about the amount of money I'm spending in electricity to be doing this.

I took some crappy quality pictures to try and illuminate the situation:

http://imgur.com/a/2ixfO

It's been sitting in this old fridge, with a heating source, been at more or less 102 for a few days. I've been stirring it, trying to encourage it to go through to minimal success. The stuff on the top layer is so very thick and creamy, it will never go through. The stuff underneath is a bit more liquid, I've managed to strain quite a decent amount of it but doubtful that I'll be able to do much more without taking it all out and retrying.

Any suggestions? Feeling stuck and frustrated here.

[Wandering Man]

When I had my first hive thirty years ago, I was young, poor, and didn't know the difference between raw honey and pasteurized honey, I used a home-made solar wax melter to separate the wax from the honey.

I stuffed the frame down one leg of my wife's pantyhose (no, she wasn't wearing them at the time. yes, we washed them first), and put it in wax melter.

The honey and wax filtered through the hose, with the wax resting on top of the honey. The gunk stayed in the hose. I pulled the frame out to be reused.

3Reds didn't reuse her hose.

They got put in the trash.

[Perry]

I'm thinking that you have to go slightly warmer, and stir up the bucket to get the granulated stuff to liquefy before running it through your strainer.

[omnimirage]

I was mistaken, the honey wasn't liquid at all, it was 100% thick and creamed. I took it out, put it in a bucket, heated it into liquid, then poured. Hardly any seemed to have seaped through, it mostly all went thick, and creamed, before seaping through the sieve.

Can I somehow be creating conditions to make creamed, or crystalised, honey?

I may have had to simply heated it out more so. I guess I'll scoop it out, heat it up higher, and do it again. If it doesn't work this time I think I'm just going to give up and feed it to the bees. Shouldn't take a week to strain two fist fulls of almost straight honey through a sieve, it's very frustrating and I don't know what I'm doing wrong.