Honey house and Swing Basket Extractor

[Poly Hive]

Bottom pic shows my old honey house, 21 x 10ft. Extractor on the right, 500 lb tank on the left, honey pump below and bottling machine minus tank to the right of the pump. The pump it's self is on the wooden stand and the stator the beige looking piece is on the pump stand. The pump works by revolving the Archimedes Screw in the stator, and it works very well in deed, some 200 lbs an hour flow rate if I remember rightly. worked out by timing a bucket being filled.

You can just see the end of the work top, some 8ft long so the honey was pumped over night, then pumped into the bottling machine, it did pounds and halves, then the filled jars went onto the work top for capping and labelling, then boxing up. 100 lbs an hour was quite feasible.

Not visible was the honey warmer, aka a chest freezer that took over 300 lbs if needed, and the sink with hot and cold water. No windows but a 6" extractor fan was fitted which I have to say was actually used in anger when I had a spot of bother with whisky honey, the fumes... sheesh... down right dangerous they were the first time I tried to mix in the malt.

The rather dirty bucket is sitting on top of the dehumidifier, an item worth it's weight in gold combined with some warm air blowing through the supers to be extracted.

The whole building was lined with food grade quality insulated washable panels, that alone was £5k in 1992. The insulation was so good the temp never dropped below 5C even in the harshest frosts.

Extractor is a 6 Swing Basket from Thomas, and takes 6 frames of any size or 12 super frames of any size, certainly length wise it has room to spare for Langstroths. It extracts tangentially with out removing the combs. It came very oddly I thought without a brake. However the Sparks on the rig came up with an idea, made it for me and it worked a treat, a box of tricks that the power went through to the motor and a handle with just reduced the power to the motor and absorbed heat too. Very clever.

PH
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[BBG]

That's very interesting to see Polyhive - thanks.

Couple of questions -

What did you use to heat the chest freezer?

What size for the dehumidifier?

How was honey taken from extractor to bottling tank?

 

[Poly Hive]

Three forty watt bulbs controlled by a thermostat.

Honey went from extractor to warmer, then through spin drier to clean, once clean allowed to set, then warmed and seeded, allowed to set again and again warmed and creamed. THEN to the bottling machine and all my honey floral and heather was creamed.

PH

 

[BBG]

Thanks and why all creamed?

 

[Poly Hive]

Shop shelf life.

PH

 

[Holly Bees]

could I bob round sometime this week for a cuppa and to see/talk about your set up PH?

 

[drstitson]

"pic shows my old honey house,"

 

[Poly Hive]

Belonged to a former life.

Extraction kit is now a knife and a former. KISS

PH

 

[RoofTops]

I would second the dehumidifier. A simple domestic one has saved me several bucket loads of OSR honey which was too high in moisture. I haven't tried it on frames although I guess that would be more effective, but I find it works well enough with the honey in buckets with the lid off. It will take two or three days to lose 1% but after a week the honey is ready for storage.

The only restriction of course is you need a clean ant-free room and the honey must be fine filtered afterwards.

I have a suspicion the lower density "wet" honey floats to the top of the buckets where it gets exposed to the dry air. My only evidence for this is the honey on the top feels thinner to begin with but after a few days it seems thicker - may be just imagination but the method works.

 

[Poly Hive]

Bernard had one at Craibstone whch took three stacks of supers and if you really hoisted them up using supers as steps, I could get 36 on.

On what? On a warm air blower which gently blew air up through the stacks warming the honey and of course drying it too, in combo with a de-humidifier.

I took the concept into my set up and it worked very well, although if you are working with heather you need to watch the water levels lest you are drying of pound notes.

PH

 

[Queens59]

Love the set up PH - we are looking to move next year, and I've said I won't go unless I get a honey shed...I can dream