We ran out of frames and foundation this week and rather than just order more, thought it would be a good idea to finally extract some honey. I pulled 4 and a half full supers from my 9 hives, and decided to go the squish route rather than extracting, despite owning a small extractor. I believe the bees are better off making new comb each year, and besides, we want wax for candles just as much as we want honey.
This evening I crushed 2 supers full of frames through a double screen sieve and 3 gallon bucket setup with honey gate, and am wondering now, how others do this. Crushing combs makes a big mixed mess that takes quite awhile to screen out through the filter. So it's quite a waiting game. Short of buying a bunch more sieves and buckets, what are others doing short of heating the conglomeration to melt the wax? This honey is really quite light in color and very good, I refuse to apply heat and affect the taste, at least for that honey that will be bottled. Is there a press of some kind that would speed this up and make it easier?
Thanks as always for any insight!
[This message has been edited by Bill_newbee (edited June 26, 2004).]