Heather honey - what extra equipment needed

[Grif]

wondering what extra equipment might be needed to extract heather honey. Already have a decent electric tangential extractor. Is a press essential? Any recommendations for particular makes and models?

 

[B+.]

wondering what extra equipment might be needed to extract heather honey. Already have a decent electric tangential extractor. Is a press essential? Any recommendations for particular makes and models?

With luck somebody with more experience will reply....I've seen it done but never harvested heather honey myself.
Heather is thixotropic so it turns to a jelly-like substance inside the comb. It can't be extracted like any other honey. You have to prick and agitate the honey inside the cell before you can extract it (using devices like these http://www.swienty.com/shop/default.asp?catid=1131 ). After that, I believe you can extract it normally.

 

[masterBK]

If you go for cut comb and chunk honey (both of which carry a price premium) then less honey to extract. In my association there are four people including myself with a press and others borrow from them.

 

[BeeJayBee]

Your association may have a press you can borrow or hire but, if you'd prefer your own, you could buy a stainless steel fruit/wine press from ebay for less than £100. It isn't large, but is big enough for a few colonies. You would probably need to alter the size of the pipe to cope with the flow.

 

[mbc]

I have extracted tonnes of the bloody stuff in a tangential extractor after wiggling it with one of those spring loaded hand held looseners, tedious doesn't fully describe it!

 

[itma]

... you could buy a stainless steel fruit/wine press **from ebay** for less than £100. It isn't large, but is big enough for a few colonies. You would probably need to alter the size of the pipe to cope with the flow.

That's a decent price ...
There are plenty similar (and larger) versions of such things eg http://www.lovebrewing.co.uk/presses-crushers/fruit-presses/
You can get filter bags to fit inside such things, so the hole size in the barrel barely matters.
Regarding the delivery pipe, I think you'd be better off with just a simple spout...

However, perhaps it should be mentioned that because of the extraction difficulty, heather honey is ideally marketed as cut comb (or, for the brave, sections).
I've read the suggestion of getting unwired frames drawn on an early flow (OSR?), extracted, carefully stored, and then given back to the bees to fill on the heather - thus avoiding comb-drawing during the short heather flow.

 

[jonnybeegood]

I bought a great heather honey press in an auction for £25, ive reconned it & it worked brilliantly as an apple press for my cider making

 

[Honeybeeco]

Our main crop here is heather honey due to us living smack bang within acres of heather land and i have to say pressing it and the clearing up is a painfull practice no matter what we've used. I did a few frames for myself last year using our home equipment and we won't do that again - even though everyone loved the jars of it.

This year we will leave it in the super frames and sell it as a frame or cut comb only, infact we've just had a delivery of super frames just for that job arrive today from our local wood chippy which was no fun after the forklift ran flat of battery after 4 pallets and we had to handball 7 pallets of frames down by hand.

I'm not sure what was worse, crushing heather honey or off loading 11 pallets of frames by hand....

By the way, we tend to remove heather honey frames from all our hives and let them winter on summer honey as it tends to be a strong honey for the bees and they make a vey big mess everywhere when leaving the hives on clensing flights due to it.

 

[Thymallus]

Best heather press I've ever seen (not mine) was a Swiss make, worked by hydraulics. Will press approx a brood box worth in a few minutes. No sweat. Alas no longer made, I think. Was only about a 1k new as well.
Although the biggest is (I think) still at Buckfast Abbey. 7 tons a year or summat like that.

 

[Grif]

Thanks for the info. I don't really want cut comb and really only want stuff that I can jar up. Sounds like a lot of effort. Because it is so jelly like I'm wondering how to get it out of the extractor, through a filter and into the jars. ...

 

[mbc]

Because it is so jelly like I'm wondering how to get it out of the extractor, through a filter and into the jars. ...

Gravity and a spatula for the end bits is fine out of the extractor but some sort of pressure is needed to filter it, either pressing through a cloth, pumping through an inline filter or what I use, shearing through a vacuum filter.

 

[Erichalfbee]

What a palaver......no wonder it's so expensive, rightly so, by the way.
I love heather honey and have toyed with taking a colony to the heather but on second thoughts......I'll just buy it

 

[BeeJayBee]

Thanks for the info. I don't really want cut comb and really only want stuff that I can jar up. Sounds like a lot of effort. Because it is so jelly like I'm wondering how to get it out of the extractor, through a filter and into the jars. ...

If you press it then honey will be forced out through a filter bag or filter cloth during pressing. If you keep the room warm - no warmer than hive temperature for heather honey - it's easier to work.

True heather honey is full of tiny bubbles, so it weighs less, so the jars need to be filled almost to the brim.

Some people deliberately move their hives to get a heather crop, but some whose bees collect it by chance leave it alone, and let the bees eat it, because it can be so time consuming to extract.

 

[dexter's shed]

Thanks for the info. I don't really want cut comb and really only want stuff that I can jar up. Sounds like a lot of effort. Because it is so jelly like I'm wondering how to get it out of the extractor, through a filter and into the jars. ...

cut comb is a far sight easier than jarring believe me

 

[Thymallus]

Because it is so jelly like I'm wondering how to get it out of the extractor, through a filter and into the jars. ...

A lot depends on how fine you wish to filter it....
It is a thick runny liquid (not gel like) when freshly extracted and I find it will flow through the coarse and fine stainless steel mesh extractors with no problem. I do this as my fine extraction bags always end up with bits of wax on the outside which gets into the honey, which I then re-filter to remove the bits. I've never tried running it through anything finer myself.
It will then return to it's jelly like state when left alone in the jar or bucket.