55 Gal. Barrels

[Moon]

Where can I pick up some food grade 55 gal. barrels from to store honey in?

[tabby]

I see them fairly often on craigslist down here in Denver. They often need to be rinsed out, but are food grade. They vary a lot in price. The lowest I've seen is $15 a barrel, but often they go for $35.

[Fuzzy]

Uline.com Remember, you are dealing with food so you want barrels that are approved for food.

[crofter]

You often see barrels listed as "used juice barrels". Winemaking stores often have them surplus.

[The Honey Householder]

Honey packers.

[NW_Mark]

Chain of ownership/usage is key to used barrels. Just because it says its “food grade” does not mean that the last item in it was a food safe item. I would never pick up one off of Craigs without knowing its usage history. Food processing plants are a great place to start. I am able to get pallets of 8 for free in my area. Give them to other members of my Reef Aquarium club

Or

http://www.epcontainers.net/

[Memtb]

Moon,
Try contacting Pepsi in Worland, they get their syrup for soft drinks in 55gal. white plastic drums. memtb

[Vance G]

Mr Moon, how is the extraction battle going? I hope well. Enquiring minds want to know!

[Cleo C. Hogan Jr]

Check with manufacturing plants that manufacture salad dressings, apple butter, tomato paste, ketchup, etc. They all use a lot of crushed pineapple and other fruits and oils, and the barrels are food grade. Mazzoriti (sp) has a plant here in Horse Cave, and their barrels are $10.00 each.

cchoganjr

[Moon]

Mr Moon, how is the extraction battle going? I hope well. Enquiring minds want to know!

Tonight was the first night I extracted any frames Vance G. Everything that got extracted tonight was placed in either 1 gal. buckets or 5 gal. buckets. It's midnight here and I'm tired from pulling the honey and then extracting (plus one to many shots of crown) so I'm not 100% on how I feel about it. I can honestly say I dislike extracting honey the most out of all of my beekeeping endeavors but I was tired and made a lot of mistakes tonight. On top of making mistakes I was grossly unprepared and the way my extracting operation was set up would probably be laughable to even the most neophytic of beekeepers; however, a lesson learned from an experience not yet had is undoubtedly a most valuable lesson indeed and what I can tell you I took away from this night of harvesting the sweet nectar of the gods is that I will never again (after this season anyways) use an uncapping knife or an uncapping scratcher. Before I even pull a single super for extraction next season I will have some form of automated uncapping system in places or by god those **** supers will stay on the hives until I can afford one. Never have I hated a task as much as I hate manually uncapping frames of honey. As far as the rest of it goes, it was pretty exciting watching my first bucket be filled with honey, even more so tasting the honey from my fist harvest (although I've been stealing fingers full of honey out of my supers all summer long so the taste wasn't unexpected just the feeling of having my own harvested honey). We've got some trade shows coming up in November and December where I plan to off load some of the sweet processed nectar and I'm hoping to sock away some cash for that automated uncapper for next season, come hell or high water, I'll have myself a bloody automated uncapper.

[EastSideBuzz]

So my next purchase is a cappings spinner then this uncapper http://www.maxantindustries.com/uncapping.html Is this the one you are looking at?

I think I like the maxant better then the http://www.brushymountainbeefarm.com...oductinfo/795/ but, not sure yet. Maxant seems more auto and Brushy is more manual.

[jim lyon]

Moon: Might I suggest Crown after The job is done and not during.......automated extracting setups are pretty spendy.

[Moon]

Crown? I'm not sure Eastside. The brushy mountain sideliner looks like it uncaps quite a bit faster then the maxant one seems slower and about as labor intensive as the brushy mountain one based off of the youtube videos I've seen. In all honesty I would like to have a full line Cowen setup some years down the road so I'm debating on splurging and getting a Cowen Uncapper and just start building the rest of the system around the uncapper as I can afford it and acquire the space. I'm not sure.

[Moon]

Honey on the floor, honey on the walls, honey on ALL of the door handles, honey on the dogs, honey on the sinks, honey in places I didn't know honey could get into. I have comb honey in all manner of different containers and saran wrapped up to give to friends, family, and to sell. I've got 50 gallons of honey in buckets and I'm not even close to being done. I have to go back to work tomorrow for five days then I leave for Vegas for 5 days before I can get back and continue chipping away at this. I'm overwhelmed in a good way, I feel really fortunate that I was blessed with such a large surplus considering the majority of other beeks in my area say they're not even going to bother with extracting because they don't have enough or that if they do they definitely won't have any extra after personal use. In any case I'm going to have to invest some serious time and thought into designing a much cleaner and more efficient honey house... I can't believe this is taking this much time.

[Mbeck]

It's a good problem you have!
Be very thankful you don't have SHB! I could never leave honey supers around for 10 days.

[machinemaker]

I work in a food processing plant and bring home empty 55 gallon drums each month. I want to use one to build a larger extractor. my advice is to look at food and beverage processers.
kent