Honey strainer getting clogged

[omnimirage]

The other day, I was pouring honey, and as I was getting closer to the bottom, the wax that was floating on the top started to get into the jars at excessive rates. Now there really wasn't much wax on the top, but I decided to put all the honey in the strainer.

It was going slowly, I was stirring and moving it around but not making much progress. I had to go to sleep, so I put the strainer inside my heating fridge, which was sitting at 36 celcius.

I woke up and hardly anything went through the strainer. I stirred it and not much happened, and I took a photo of it:

https://imgur.com/a/5MACa

So I've been using the crush and strain method to create my honey. I've been having a lot of issues with the honey not being strained properly. I'm now rather perplexed, as I couldnt even strain pure honey.

This sieve I'm using is one that's specifically marketed for honey.

Could it just be that my honey is thicker? Could I get something else to strain through, maybe I need bigger holes?

[Perry]

My guess would be that the screen was already plugged and even after you heated up the honey that didn't change. I would clean everything off the screen, heat the honey and then pass it through.
I have had the same thing happen when I used to extract, once the screen is plugged it's back to square one.

[G3farms]

When the screen first started to plug up and you stirred the honey in the strainer wax was pushed into the screen plugging it up.

Rinse out the strainer and use boiling water to clear out the wax that is pressed into the screen.

[Lburou]

Omni, I am having the SAME problem.   

The honey plugging the strainer in your picture is granulating.  I am using a curved bread dough spatula to gently scrape that granulation to the side, allowing the ungranulated honey to pass through the strainer.

I scooped the granulated honey into my catch pan under my uncapping station, I'll open feed that so bees will clean it up and it won't get wasted -Perry has a thread on making granulated honey for sale I believe.  To clean the strainer when the honey had dripped into the bucket, I used a garden hose, then dried the strainer with compressed air.  Slow. 

We just began extracting for the year.  My strainer was plugged just like your picture.  I have extracted 22 heavy deep frames and have only three gallons of honey!  (22 deep frames heavy with honey should yield almost ten gallons.)  After running the powered extractor at a medium speed for 20 minutes, the frames are still heavy.  No more honey coming out.  I don't want to lose any honeycomb, so there will be no crushing.  I've seen granulated honey in the bottom of cells on the honeycomb before, but never to this extent.  This honey is a viscous slush in consistency. 

I believe the weather conditions here this summer caused a bumper crop of an unknown nectar source.  I'll be sending a honey sample to figure out the nectar source of this honey.   HTH   

[apisbees]

Place the supers in a 95 deg hot room or box for about 3+ days it will liquefy some of the crystals.
it is harder to dissolve crystals once the liquid fructose has been spun out. No moisture left around the glucose crystals to absorb back into the them.
Caution needs to be used and the super need to be heated if heavy crystallization is found. If not we may be only selling 1/2 honey as the Glucose part of the sugars are still in the comb in the forum of crystals and what we have extracted is the fructose sugars that do not crystallize.

" It was going slowly, I was stirring and moving it around but not making much progress. I had to go to sleep, so I put the strainer inside my heating fridge, which was sitting at 36 celcius. I woke up and hardly anything went through the strainer. I stirred it and not much happened"

36 celcius = 97* F. which is warm enough to dissolve the crystals, but to dissolve the crystals need to reabsorb the moisture that they shed when they crystallized. That moisture is is attached to the fructose sugars that drained through first.
Solution Warm and dissolve any crystals first then skim any wax from the surface and them filter. The honey will flow through like water.

[Lburou]

Apis, I appreciate your comments.   Your explanation about extracting granulated honey and the different sugars is something had not occurred to me.  I had put the first group of frames in the cab of my pickup to warm and reliquify the honey, but it hasn't been warm enough yet -very ironic for Texas. 

With a healthy Small Hive Beetle population, you can't leave supers sitting around to get warm for very long until they will be FULL of SHB larva...That makes timing more complicated.  I feel like I need to have those supers back on hives within 48 hours to hand off any hatching larva to be policed by the bees.

It would make sense to leave the supers on the hive until it warms up again, but the bees are now working broomweed, and that makes the hive smell like dirty socks, and taints the honey.  I had delayed harvesting until after our 50th wedding anniversary celebration and all the family things had passed.   The delay put us past the heat of summer that would have made it easy to reliquify the honey.  My own choice. 

P.S.  Kieth, what would you think about taking the supers off the hives now and freezing them to kill SHB eggs and larva, then warming them on a hot day and then extracting them?  The first 11 frames yielded a quart and a half of honey...I had taken them off the hives a couple weeks ago and put them in a freezer.  The 11 frames that were not frozen yielded more, but a lot less than all their honey. 

[apisbees]

Freeze to kill the larva Yes. But the warming to melt crystals due to the density I think it will take more time than a hot day. I would give them 2 to 3 days at 95 deg. To get the crystallized honey out of the already extracted frames to liquefy you would need to keep the humidity at 55% or higher.
55% humidity will keep the moisture absorption rate in honey at 17% moisture. So the warm (95deg) glucose crystals will absorb the moisture and re-liquefy.

[Lburou]

I see.  I'll do that for the already extracted frames, thanks for the humidity primer.    Thing is, this honey has been sitting (mostly uncapped) in the hive in humid  90-97 F weather as late as last week.  Why didn't the honey liquify then?

[tedh]

Hey Lburou,  congratulations!  Fiftieth wedding anniversay!  Good on you and your wife!  Ted

[Lburou]

Hey Lburou,  congratulations!  Fiftieth wedding anniversay!  Good on you and your wife!  Ted

Thanks Ted...that 50 years is all to her credit. 

[apisbees]

Blame it on the bees! the bees create heat to lower humidity in the hive. out side humidity and the humidity in the hive are different. the brood cluster is kept at 94 deg the rest of the hive is kept cooler, the warmth of the daytime high only lasts a few hours the other 20 hours of the day the temp is well below the honey reliquefaction point.

Thank Omni for starting this tread. It is an informative topic which involves many different elements with relation to the properties of honey.

[Lburou]

...Thank Omni for starting this tread. It is an informative topic which involves many different elements with relation to the properties of honey.

Our thanks to you too Apis  :Applause:

[apisbees]

No need for thanks I just have to much information floating around my head trying to find a way out.. buy the questions asked and scenarios presented It caused me to use the knowledge I have obtained to analyze the problem. 

[omnimirage]

I cleaned that thing by pouring boiling water on it and scrubbing it for a few hours, and poking out bits of tough wax with wooden sticks, and I even used a torch to burn off some of the wax(worked well but I saw that it'd damage the strainer in time). At the end of such, maybe five to fifteen percent of the holes still had some fragments of wax inn them, mostly in the bottom sieve around the sides. I'm not sure how to clean it better. Maybe if I had a pot large enough, I could sit the whole strainer in there, and actually boiling it, rather than just tipping boiling water over it and scrubbing.

Is there a difference between granulating honey, and crystallised honey? First time I've heard that term in this context.

That sure is peculiar about honey having gone crystallised before extraction, I'd be curious to know if the nectar source has anything to do with it. I've come to observe that different honey is thicker than others, that some is more prone to crystallising and there's varying difficulties with straining the different types. The problem that I'm facing is, all my buckets of unprocessed honey have crystallised, and a lot of it is quite thick.

They have been sitting in a 100 f room for a few days already. Yes, some of them did dissolve, a lot of it did, but apparently not all. So I suppose then the fructose liquid has separated from it's crystals. I did mix a few different buckets of similar honey together, some of it was very grainy, and wouldn't entirely melt down, even though I heated it a few above 100 for almost a week.

How should I dissolve all the crystals then? Do I simply need to heat it at higher temperatures? I'm concerned that, already at the temperatures that I'm heating it to, that I could be causing damage to it. I'm really unsure, but it seems like to properly liquidify honey, I will have to inadvertently cause damage to it, at least the honey that I have, as I read that it's not just the temperature which causes damage to honey, but also time of exposure to said temperatures, and I've been leaving the honey for at times weeks in there.

What would the humidity be like inside my heating fridge? Should I buy myself a device to measure the humidity in there? If so could I modify the humidity in there? I'm not sure if this sort of thing if required, I haven't heard of this until now.

If I have very grainy, crystallised honey that just won't melt, can I add anything to it to help it turn liquid?

[riverbee]

omni, i heat honey using a bucket heater from a frozen/crystalized/granulated state stored in 5 gallon pails to about 120 - 130 dF. all crystals/granulation dissolve and i liquefy honey no problem, and strains/filters easily.

as far as the strainer, jet spray from the opposite side to flush it using hot water.

[omnimirage]

Are the bucket heaters good? They seem a bit pricey.

Since there's been lots of talk of honey straining, I figured I'd share some photos of what I've been doing lately:

https://imgur.com/a/i7n5w

I bought two food grade plastic storage boxs, I used a drill to put holes on the bottom of the top box, and the lid on the bottom box. I'm using some curtain cloth to strain it in, small but decent size holes. I have these buckets full ofcrystallised bits of honeycomb that I scrapped into a bucket, so I've been heating the buckets in the fridge, then tipping the honey out of the bucket into the straining boxs, it all comes out as a solid, then turns into that sludge and so very slowly strains down. I leave it in a 100 f / 36-38 c environment almost constantly. It takes an excessive amount of time and it's very difficult straining it down much further. I might try to hang the sacks above a bucket in the fridge. The buckets contain about 30 liters of honey/wax and stuff.

[apisbees]

Omni, the honey needed to make the wax that the bees have had to rebuild to draw out the combs is a way more valuable than the cost of an extractor. every super of wax not given back to the bees to refill is costing you $60.00 to $100.00 dollars (depending on super size) in honey sold retail. leaving the wax and not separating it quickly also gives the honey something to start forming crystals on.
The wax and honey in the buckets, have they been partially strained ? What was/is the moisture content?

[omnimirage]

I see. I really do need to get myself an extractor. Not having all this wax in the way would make straining easier as well.

They haven't been partially strained, they've been mostly sitting there for over a year and have gone solid crystal, wax and bee stuff all in the buckets, seems there's mostly honey on the bottom and mostly wax on the top. Not sure about the moisture content, I just scrapped honey frames directly into the buckets.

[Barbarian]

I strain the honey and wax from my extractor through a very coarse filter into buckets. When it comes to bottling, some of the buckets may have set solid or granulated. I put the buckets in a warming cabinet for 48 hours .... maybe longer if the granulations have not gone back to liquid. I skim the wax off the top of the bucket and fine filter the warm liquid honey into a bottling tank.

The wet wax from the extractor step, the skimmings and the debris on the fine filter are drained then fed back to the bees via a tray feeder.

[riverbee]

"Are the bucket heaters good? They seem a bit pricey."

worth every penny and last forever. i can heat a 5 gallon pail of frozen honey overnight and it is liquid in the morning, ready to filter/strain to a another 5 gallon pail for pouring.
 
i say frozen..........also crystallized/granulated. i store my extracted honey in 5 gallon pails in a garage. it freezes here in the winter. the bucket heater works well to bring the honey to a liquid state to filter into another 5 gallon pail with a honey gate. in summer months, the same. less time.