honey warming cabinet with fridge

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blackie

House Bee
Joined
Apr 19, 2012
Messages
250
Reaction score
1
Location
biddenden
Hive Type
Langstroth
Number of Hives
30 langstroths with 3 on double brood and solid floors and no queen excluder til the fall
Hi guys any pics of honey cabinet with old fridge or links that I could follow as ive got fridge ready to make one ?
 
Made mine with a small freezer and then placed a 60 watt bulb in and then bought a thermo controll 2.. They use them 2 heat lizzard tanks works a treat
 
Mine is just an old fridge with the cooling mechanism removed, and a 100 watt bulb controlled by a dimmer switch. The piece of wood with the tin foil plate wrapped around it is just to prevent a hot spot forming on whatever is above it.

Since taking this pic, I've since replaced the dimmer switch with an electronic thermostat to better control the temperature.

Warming_Cabinet.JPG
 
What temp are you running at... made a monster queen cell incubator from a coke fridge, set at 37 deg Chinese thermostat with a fan heater ( + a humidifier that can be turned off.....
not that my honey crystallises as it is from perfect Cornish black bees !
 
thanks guys ive ordered 1ft 60w tube heater and go from ther
 
Lee, find yourself a small (ex-computer) fan that works on 5 or 12 volts DC. Then find a small phone charger (or mains adaptor for a broken toy) that gives a similar (or slightly less) DC output. Stirring the air helps a lot.

Minimise mains electricity connections *inside* the box, and waterproof them.

An upside-down large size thick metal baking dish above the heat source will help to diffuse the heat and avoid hot spots.

Get a digital thermometer with a 'remote' (cheaper if wired) display so that you can read the inside temperature *without* opening the door!

A dimmer switch would allow manual control of the heat input, but gets boring.
An electronic "temperature controller" can be very cheap (see eBay) barely more than a thermometer.
Having a thermometer as well as such a controller would allow you to check the even-ness of the heating (see above about fans and metal trays!)
And a third (immersible) one would allow you to see how much the honey itself had actually warmed up.


In the first instance, you don't want to be heating the honey above about 45C. It will depend on what you have (and how much of it) as to whether you have to hold that temperature for hours or days!
// 35c should be all it takes for fine filtering of show honey //
Certainly, the game is to heat the honey as little as possible ...
 
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The one I made a couple of years ago was from an old small upright freezer with the cooling apparatus carefully removed.
I use a heating element from an egg incubator (bought in kit form).
I think that way the heat distribution is pretty even and no hot spots ar formed.
Ofc the addition of a small fan would circulate the air and probably even the vertical heat difference out more.

The heating element comes with a control but I use a wireless thermometer sensor that I put on top of the buckets / jars so that I know the max temp. reached and can adjust accordingly.

Personally I find a temp of 35-36 degs C max is enough to soften my set honey for making soft set. Depending on the time of year and amount in the bucket(s) it can take 2-3 days.
 
Haven't been able to post this before now as my original pictures I posted had disappeared during the big server move. So here goes, two 12" tubular heaters wired in parallel (one could just about heat the cabinet but it took ages, with two it's a doddle and with loads of heat to play with so it could heat a larger cabinet) STC 1000 temperature controller. Couple of hours work (which included safely removing ;) the guts and cleaning the fridge out) and Bob's your auntie
 
thanks guys and were have you put the stc1000 any chance of pic ?I presume leave fan on all the time even when heat on and of?
 
thanks guys and were have you put the stc1000 any chance of pic ?I presume leave fan on all the time even when heat on and of?

Haven't got a fan on mine, heat seems pretty even throughout the cabinet. Have a look for the STCW 1000 on fleabay - I have mine sitting on top of the fridge with the thermostat lead threaded through where the refrigerant pipe originally entered - haven't got around to fixing them permanently yet due to experimenting with the best place for the sensor and plain laziness. Hole drilled top and bottom for the heater leads which meet behind where they are wired in series to the power supply from the controller,so you have to buy a few feet of wire - socket to controller and controller to heaters.
 
Did you buy the 240v stc 1000?
 

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