[barberberryfarm]

Some of you have seen the videos where folks use a heated blow dryer of some sort to melt the wax on capped honey. Personally, I'm fond of the "Easy Peasy" video, mostly because the commentator used such a cool phrase. My question is this to those that have actually tried it. Did you encounter any "negatives" using this approach other than it is not the accepted practice used by the majority of beekeepers.

I have to admit the "pros" seem pretty good:

- A lot easier and faster than using the more conventional hand tools such as an uncapping knife or a capping scratcher.

- Minimal damage to the comb resulting in less work for the bees to rebuild.

- Don't have to mess with straining the honey from the decappings.

- Don't have to mess with the wax from the decappings, especially if you have no desire to make anything with the resulting pile of beeswax.

I asked my friend who actually used this technique the other day if he felt the honey might be damaged by the heat of the blow dryer and he didn't believe so since the individual cappings weren't individually exposed for very long.

For those of you that have tried it, did you run into any negatives or did you like it so much you switched to using this approach exclusively. Now I have 10 hives and I usually have about 7-10 boxes of frames to decap at a time, so it's not like I have 100's of frames to decap in one sitting. If I did, I'd get an automated decapper. No question.

Any thoughts will be greatly appreciated.

 

[grozzie2]

When we tried it, the melted cappings solidified again before we could get the frames into the extractor.

We never tried it again, looked great in the video, didn't work so well when we were extracting. The was melted, flowed, then resealed the cells when it cooled.

 

[smccabe]

I will have to try it - it might work best with really fresh wax that is over only part of the frame?

 

[waynesgarden]

Don't know anyone using a blow dryer but I've used a heat gun (a grown-up blow dryer) on a few supers and the results were moderately satisfactory though I am planning to try it again. It wasn't as clean and easy as in the videos I've seen but it was promising.

Having tried the heat gun (which is what I've seen in YouTube videos) I wouldn't bother with the lower heat capacity of a blow dryer.

There was a recent thread about heat guns so be prepared for someone easily offended instructing you to use the search function instead of asking.

Wayne

 

[barberberryfarm]

Thanks Wayne. I'll search on "heat gun". I tried searching on a variety of combinations, but heat gun was not one of them.

 

[ggoodman]

down here where it will be at least 90F when we exstract im thinking the wax will take longer to cool. but i'll def be giving the heat gun a try when the time comes

 

[grozzie2]

We tried something different, but equally easy / simple this year on our first round. Cappings punch, looks like a little paint roller with big plastic spikes. Worked very well for us, can uncap 18 frames for the next load in half the time it takes the current load to spin out. No mess, no cappings to deal with, just worked. It worked so well, we ordered another one, so we have a spare. Not very expensive, and makes uncapping really easy.

 

[evheide]

A key factor in my experience is that you have the nice white caps on newer equipment. If the wax has no air under it there isn't the nice white caps. The process worked very well for us as long as we didn't have the "sunken" caps.

 

[Bob J]

I use the heat gun method when I extract.... Frames seem to extract ok and for me it's nice not to have to deal with processing the caps....