[BEESERIOUS]

I have a Silver Queen Uncapper with stand and I'm undecided on buying the Cowen drip pan for the SQU or the Kelley uncapping Tank. I need some help, what would you guys get. Thanks.

 

[jim lyon]

How are you extracting and how are you handling your cappings? A drip pan is designed to catch drips as the frames are traveling on a holding rack towards the extractor while a cappings tank is designed to hold and drain wet cappings as they fall off of your cutting blades. Perhaps you need both?

 

[psfred]

We made an uncapping station out of a cooler this year, works great.

You will need a tank to drain the cappings unless you plan to get/make a spinner to get the honey out. We used #20 mesh screen which allows the honey to run right through but none of the wax and just let them drain for a few days.

We will be making a much larger stainless steel tank with screen for this job, we expect to have much more honey next year and that cooler was just adequate for six supers. Given that we plan to have six times that (if we are lucky!), more capacity is required.

Peter

 

[BEESERIOUS]

Sorry, I guess I needed to provide more information.
I already have a small uncapping tank that can hold about 25 frames it's about 4-5 feet long but it's not too deep. If I buy the drip pan I would use a tub under the Uncapper and then manually dump them in the small tank that I already have, or I could just use the 8 feet long Kelley Uncapping tank.

 

[BEESERIOUS]

Btw, the the tank that I have it's too narrow and some frames touch both sides of the cappings tank and get stuck. The reason why I'm looking for a different set up.

 

[psfred]

The beekeeper down the road from me has the Kelley tank and likes it. If you actually need the space to drain cappings, it's a good option. I don't like messing around with piles of wet cappings myself, extracting is messy enough as it is!

Peter