draining honey from decapping

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Hachi

Queen Bee
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Damn! A lot more than I ever thought I'd have
I have some cappings from extraction that are wet with honey does anyone use a bag to drain it before feeding back in the feeder? Is so which bag is best?
 
I drop the cappings onto a rectangular cake cooling tray over a deep tin the same size. Honey drains away and with a few turnings of the wreckage most of it is caught in the tray for me to filter/use/sell as cappings honey as I wish.
However . . . After reading SireeDubs post this morning I think my future cappings are going to be rinsed in vodka, as he suggests, and I shall enjoy honey vodka through the winter. Much easier than all that faff making mead!
:cheers2:

Afterthought: what if I were to feed the cappings back to the bees after they'd been rinsed with vodka? Squiffy bees?
 
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A pair of tights or stockings clean and unused, fill with cappings and hang in a warm place with a bowl underneath.
 
Heat gun

:yeahthat:
Heat gun all the way... first time this year, no mess, no effect on honey taste. I'm a convert

Couldn't agree more. My first time using a heat gun this year, much quicker and virtually no mess!
 
I'm a happy traveller on the heat-gun bandwagon....
 
A pair of tights or stockings clean and unused, fill with cappings and hang in a warm place with a bowl underneath.

Pop socks are also available. Cheaper and less long.
 
Well all this talk about heat guns I must give it a try, I bought one the other day but with no intention on de-capping only to repair the mother board on my lap top so one the ready for next extraction (maybe)
 
.
If you have disease in one hive, you spread it to all via capping feeding.

Only if you feed it back to any other hive other than whence it originated Finny :cheers2:
 
Sorry to seem ignorant - but what's a heat gun? I will be extracting soon and am following this particular thread with interest. I am assuming a hairdryer wont be of any use once the cappings are in the tights / jelly bag ? Might melt the wax ?
Thanks
 
Sorry to seem ignorant - but what's a heat gun? I will be extracting soon and am following this particular thread with interest. I am assuming a hairdryer wont be of any use once the cappings are in the tights / jelly bag ? Might melt the wax ?
Thanks

Its a gun for stripping paint, but used correctly will uncap honey frames.
 
Its a gun for stripping paint, but used correctly will uncap honey frames.

You can buy them for £20.

then 3 days later you will see the same type in a different shop for £10.
 
Its a gun for stripping paint, but used correctly will uncap honey frames.

And there is the nub of it.

You need to get your hot air gun fully up to heat, before showing it to the comb, then keep it moving.
The cappings should splatter off pretty much instantly when the heat hits it. (So cover the table with newspaper…)

Only use it on dry (white) cappings - never on wet (icy-looking) cappings.

I use an uncapping fork to open any cells that didn't open at the first heat hit.

Overheat your honey and it won't taste good … so be careful!



It doesn't give you any cappings wax. (Until you take the bread knife to the extracted comb and make sure it ends up flat rather than the initial waviness that the bees are likely to leave on initial frame-drawing.)


If you have an awful lot of cappings (and a tangential extractor - or a radial with tangential screens), you might consider investing in a set of 'cappings bags', so that you can spin them in your extractor.

Cappings can be piled into your double strainer, or filtered through a jellybag. But they still end up 'wet' and sticky. So you could give the wax back to the bees in a feeder for scavenging, or wash it with water for mead-making, or booze for JBM & Mrs JBM, or just go straight to the final stage of washing the stickiness down the drain (a clean pillowcase as a container can help) with cold water, to get really clean cappings wax to start your wax-processing career.
 
I don't know if I like the exploding wax bit, SWMBO has given me enough ear bashing for wax bits in the kitchen.
 
Hmmm. Looks like there is real potential for getting in an awful, sticky mess. The hot air gun sounds like it should be used by people who know what they are doing (probably, not me). I was thinking of using a hot, long sharp knife. Does anyone else still use this method? Any tips if you do ?
Thanks.
 

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