granulated supers

[Finman]

Thanks for the answers though. I shall put them above a crown board and save up for an apimelter

second oh dear, dear dear dear

what makes a man select the worst choice?

 

[local_beekeeper]

Warming cabinet 42deg for 24h and will be ready to extract

 

[Finman]

.
What a shame. Guys offer tricks what they have not even used themselves.

I have heated crystallized honey one week in heating cabinet and crystals do not melt a bit.
After one week liquid honey is so dry that it is difficult to extract.
It would be easy job if you just heat crystallize combs. Then no one need to mention the whole thing.

...and buy comb melter for crystallized honey for few frames.....to those who money means nothing. Would it better to buy an extractor.

I cannot believe my eys when I read these advices. It seems that honey crystalls are as dangerous as AFB. and honey crystals are in every hive after winter.

.........feeding fondant half of winter and then destroying honey frames before summer.....oh dear...

It would be a service to nation to stop this forum.

.oh dear.

 

[Erichalfbee]

I don't keep bees near OSR but they do fill the frames with IVY honey.
I would keep the full frames for when I need them to feed back to the bees.Won't it keep "forever"?

 

[Finman]

I don't keep bees near OSR but they do fill the frames with IVY honey.
I would keep the full frames for when I need them to feed back to the bees.Won't it keep "forever"?

if you destroy combs, they are gone forever.

.

 

[Erichalfbee]

******post made no sense

 

[MuswellMetro]

.
What a shame. Guys offer tricks what they have not even used themselves.

I have heated crystallized honey one week in heating cabinet and crystals do not melt a bit.
After one week liquid honey is so dry that it is difficult to extract.
It would be easy job if you just heat crystallize combs. Then no one need to mention the whole thing.

...and buy comb melter for crystallized honey for few frames.....to those who money means nothing. Would it better to buy an extractor.

I cannot believe my eys when I read these advices. It seems that honey crystalls are as dangerous as AFB. and honey crystals are in every hive after winter.

.........feeding fondant half of winter and then destroying honey frames before summer.....oh dear...

It would be a service to nation to stop this forum.

.oh dear.

I assume from the dehydration of the honey you were just melting open comb, not broken comb in a sealed air tight honey bucket,

 

[Finman]

I assume from the dehydration of the honey you were just melting open comb, not broken comb in a sealed air tight honey bucket,

what are you saying?

At least I mean a normal honey frame which is capped.

.

 

[Dusty Rhodes]

******post made no sense

..... so fitted in well in this forum, Erichalfbee!


Dusty

 

[SixFooter]

second oh dear, dear dear dear

what makes a man select the worst choice?

I've had another idea. I'll just open them up and scatter them about the apairy. The bees will find them and rob them out. Simples!

 

[Ely]

I'd go with Rabs advice

 

[MuswellMetro]

I'd go with Rabs advice

And so do I

but I have seen and helped several times and I have extracted as i described//cut into chunks, or scrapped back to mid rib, seal in a honey bucket and into a warming cabinet for days at 43c and one of two days at 48c ...and i am not the only one, the quote is from a NDB on another web site/...ok you loose wax, ok that means the bees use honey to make new wax, so that's about 15% of a super in honey per super scraped back, ok not all the honey can be extracted, ok it is slow, ok it is messy,

Is it different from melting a honey bucket of unstrained crystallized honey to strain

15% loss of honey commercial madness for a large operation, but for a single or two hive operators, extracting crystlised honey may be their only honey (it was for some last year)

but i finman says i wrong then, I and Mathew Allan are wrong




BASIC HONEY PROCESSING Matthew Allan N.D.B.


INTRODUCTION

Visitors to the National Honey Show in London cannot fail to be impressed by Class 1 - Open To The World. Twenty-four jars of clean, clear, matched honeys in a stack, sparkling under the spotlights, Even the smallest local show will have entries to be admired whether comb, liquid, granulated or soft set.


quote from page 4 ~~~~~~~~~~~~##



Possibly the beekeeper has been caught out by oil seed rape, and has combs of solid honey. Providing the super frames have never been used for brood-rearing, this can still be recovered, Try scraping the comb back to the midrib. If the granulation is not too hard, this can be achieved. If not, smash out the whole comb, break the comb up into a bucket, put the lid on and warm in a honey warming cabinet or controllable oven to 48C to liquefy the honey, but not the wax. Then it can be filtered as before. This sort of procedure will soon convince the beginner of the benefit of the centrifugal extractor.
EXTRACTING WITH SPECIALISED EQUIPMENT

PREPARATION OF SUPERS

The warmer honey is, the more easily it runs. lt is a great advantage to warm the honey prior to extracting. A pile of supers contains a substantial mass of honey, which will not warm up enough by simply bringing it into a warm room an hour or two before extracting. A day or two is required to do the job thoroughly. A further benefit of prewarming is that the moisture content of honey in uncapped cells can be reduced. If this is desired, supers can be piled in staggered stacks, and a fan heater directed towards them. More elaborate arrangements are, of course, possible, depending on the beekeeper's ingenuity. While some heating is frequently inevitable, the drawbacks to be borne in mind are that:-

a. heating will drive some of the volatile compounds that give each honey its unique flavour and aroma. Prolonged heating can darken and damage the honey; it is an insensitive beekeeper who will use this degree of excessive heat, but the dangers need to be understood. There are standard chemical tests to identity over-heated honey.

b. the wax softens. At 40C, uncapping will be more difficult, with cell walls dragged along by the knife; at 45C combs will soften and collapse; at 63C, wax will melt.

Quote from page 5 ~~~~~~~~~~
PROBLEM HONEYS

The experienced beekeeper will have a good idea of the composition of the honeys in the supers. The beginner will need to learn to identify possible problems at this stage. lt is unlikely that the beginner will unwittingly have ling heather honey, but if this is the case, it will not extract in the normal manner. The aroma is unique, the colour is amber and has a jelly-like consistency.This subject will be touched upon later.

The major difficulty, which has become a feature of British Beekeeping in the last 20 years, is the presence of oilseed rape. This crop has benefited British beekeepers by providing a reliable spring crop, in some years yielding very heavily, and producing what can be a high quality honey if properly handled. Because of its rapid granulation, however, oil seed rape has had a bad press. If uncapping shows combs have started to granulate, it may be worth trying to extract, particularly if it has only started to go "mushy". Bear in mind there will be difficulty with an unbalanced load, however. If it does not spin out, the only options are to scrape it off the midrib, or break the comb out, and liquefy the honey by heating; or to feed it back to the bees either in the frame or in a feed. The question of processing oilseed rape honey is largely a question of management and preplanning.

~~~~~ Quote

BIBLIOGRAPHY

British Beekeepers Association, Advisory Leaflet No. 33, "Summary of the Laws Applying to the Sale and Supply of Honey"
Allan Calder "Oilseed Rape and Bees" ( Northern Bee Books)
Eugene E. Killion "Honey in the Comb" ( Dadant)
Harry Riches "Honey Marketing" Bee Books New and Old)
Jeff Rounce "Honey from Source to Sale & Showbench" (Northern Bee Books)

 

[Finman]

I've had another idea. I'll just open them up and scatter them about the apairy. The bees will find them and rob them out. Simples!

Another mad idea

- you going to fill you brood chamber with old honey
- bees tear cells in pieces

 

[Finman]

.
Rab's trick is good. But it must be do then when bees can move the honey to the super.
Otherwise it blocks the brood area.
During flow bees recap the honey in 24 hours
.
I give a box of granulated capped honey to hives

- I swapped cappings away with high pressure washer
- I put the box topmost over 4-6 box hives
- bees cleared the box in a week

no frame was ruined


I treated about 30 boxes this way

 

[Finman]

And so do I



but i finman says i wrong then, I and Mathew Allan are wrong



but I have seen and helped several times and I have extracted as i described//cut into chunks, or scrapped back to mid rib, seal in a honey bucket and into a warming cabinet for days at 43c and one of two days at 48cs)

Everyone can destroy his combs. It does not demand any skills.

 

[SixFooter]

Another mad idea

- you going to fill you brood chamber with old honey
- bees tear cells in pieces

It was sarcastic!

 

[dclewis]

I had a few frames with crystalised OSR honey in them, so I scratched off the cappings poured some water into some of the open enpty cells and put the frames in a super over a CB with small opening over a BB of a hive 2 weeks ago. Yesterday they had moved about 50% of the honey out but I now have a very high rate of chalk brood in that hive. Is this due to the high humidity that the water in the cells has created or just coincidence and it would have happened anyway? All the other hives in the apiary have usual low/no levels Chalk brood. Do others get this rise in chalk brood when feeding back crystalised stores?