Most efficient way to drain cappings

[Walt McBride]

Other than using a capping spinner any comments on draining wet comb cappings. I have always stired up the pile of cappings and spread them out in the tray when they get to high under the uncapping knife (osculating type). After I go through about 15 mediums I unload the tray the next morning. A friend says to let the comb fall from the knife in a pile and do not disturb and I will get drier cappings due to not coating the broken cappings. Any one care to comment?
Walt

[Michael Bush]

I throw them in a double bucket strainer and wait a few days.

[WhitetopMtn]

I let them drain through a bucket strainer as well. After my I think I've gotten as much as I'm willing to wait for, I use several six legged italian extractors to remove the rest and return it to the hive.

[BaldyLocks]

I put it all in a spaghetti strainer over a pan and drain a lot of honey out. I also then use Italian 6-legged extractors to finish the process. My cappings usually seem to be pretty well drained after the spaghetti strainer but the bees always get plenty of action too!

[SilverFox]

After letting them set for a few days in my uncapping tank, I move them onto old window screens and let the bees clean them.

[Tia]

I leave them in the top part of my homemade uncapping tank which is lined with a paint filter and let the honey run out and down into the lower part of the tank. After a couple of days, I gather up the corners of the paint filter with the cappings inside and twist and squeeze the remaining honey out. Works pretty good.

[AstroBee]

Walt,

My guess is that your friend is right. Stirring them up acts to coat all surfaces with honey. Some of this honey will never totally drain due to adhesion between the honey and wax [kind of like trying to get that last few drops out of a honey jar versus the first spoonful [img]smile.gif[/img] ]. I guess an argument could be made that the randomness induced from stirring (preventing some capping from facing up against gravity) could result in a better mean downward facing alignment resulting better drainage. Throw your friend a bone and try it his way once and see which you prefer. Is it a big deal, probably not if you set the partially dried capping out for the bees to clean up. That way it ends up back in your hives anyway.

[Walt McBride]

AstroBee, thanks for the return. I see that you gave it some though. Whe have gone round and round on this one. I do not think it is that important. One thing though I wish I had room for a wax spinner. My production is about 3000-4000 lbs. honey.
Walt

[Jim Fischer]

> One thing though I wish I had room for a wax
> spinner.

Well, if you have an extractor, you can kludge
up a cappings spinner by making a basket to
go inside the extractor. It need not be the
most elegant kludge on the planet to get it
to work. Mine is nothing but 1/4-inch mesh
that I wrap around the spinning assembly that
holds the frames. The mesh components are
simply tied to the frame-holder with string
(very stout string, tied tightly), creating
a basket into which one dumps wet cappings.

Yes, one must remove the spun cappings by
partially disassembling the extractor to
remove the frame-holder as a whole, dump
the cappings, and reassemble, but spinning
cappings is a "afterthought" process for me,
as I see no reason to tool up for any sort
of "continuous flow" process.

[Fusion_power]

I uncap directly into the top of a 100 gallon storage tank with a double screen and a nylon filter cloth between the screens. The honey drips out of the cappings over a period of a week and when finished, I remove the screens and cloth so the honey can finish settling which takes about 5 days. I skim the surface of the honey to get the air bubbles off.

Here's the interesting part.

I am uncapping at about the same height as the extractor so transferring the frames into and out of the extractor involves very little movement. The settling tank is right beside the extractor. Full supers are at the North, Uncapping tank is east, Extractor is South, and supers for the empty frames are West, I stand in the middle. I can extract 8 frames in about 5 minutes on average which works out to about 100 frames per hour.

What about honey in the extractor? I run it into a 5 gallon bucket and pour it into the side of the 100 gallon tank. It runs under the cappings which are sitting on top of the first screen, goes through the strainer cloth, and winds up in the storage tank ready to jar up.

This works for up to 80 gallons of honey in one tank. Obviously not efficient enough if you have 100 colonies but it works pretty well for up to 50 colonies. You may need more than one 100 gallon tank depending on how much honey produced. I just extract and jar up honey once a week until its done.

One advantage I have is that my honey does not granulate very fast so I don't have to heat it. But if necessary, a heating belt could be put around the tank.

Fusion