Rosti
Drone Bee
- Joined
- Jul 29, 2009
- Messages
- 1,755
- Reaction score
- 14
- Location
- North Yorks, UK
- Hive Type
- 14x12
- Number of Hives
- 4
Last year (autum harvest) I decapped with a hot serated knife, it was okay but would have cost drawn comb and I suspect yield.
Spring 2010 de-cap was done using a hot airgun set at 350'C (low heat) and simply played over the comb (at about 40-50mm distance from comb) until cappings melted back.
Seemed to work well and mess was kept to an absolute minimum. Good extraction yield, good comb definition and depth retained on extracted frames, a very small minority of cells did not extract fully, very little wax debris found on filters, no collapsed frames. (limited experiment, I only had 2 supers x9 to extract).
I was pleased with the outcome but can you improve on the technique I used? Are you a traditional knife de-cap supporter or a strong advocate of a completely different de-cap methodology?
Spring 2010 de-cap was done using a hot airgun set at 350'C (low heat) and simply played over the comb (at about 40-50mm distance from comb) until cappings melted back.
Seemed to work well and mess was kept to an absolute minimum. Good extraction yield, good comb definition and depth retained on extracted frames, a very small minority of cells did not extract fully, very little wax debris found on filters, no collapsed frames. (limited experiment, I only had 2 supers x9 to extract).
I was pleased with the outcome but can you improve on the technique I used? Are you a traditional knife de-cap supporter or a strong advocate of a completely different de-cap methodology?