Do you have a capping spinner? I bought one for last year's crop. Dry cappings go right in the melter as it comes from the spinner. I used the old "shovel and bucket" method for years. Messy, scorched honey, and still melting wax in December. What a nice change.
We don't use a spinner other than as a filtration method post sump tank. All our cappings and chop outs go through a powerful press that recovers almost every last scrap of honey without and heat used, and the pretty dry pressings drop into crates at the end of the press, the honey comes out of holes perforated into the drum of the press and goes to the sump tank to rejoin the output of the extractors.
Its like a load of tacky dog biscuits ad it can be stored like that if wished for rendering at a convenient time.
Our wax melter got broken a year or so back when an idiotic staff member lifted it on its pallet with the forklift while it was plugged in to the three phase supply, headed off across the yard with it, completely ripping the guts out of it and the wall socket too.
Its a bespoke tank made for us by Carl Fritz in Germany, triple walled and insulted for operator safety, so unfortunately it took some time to get it repaired and we can only do the melting job at certain times of the year due to the smell attracting lots of bees and wasps. That's a bit of a problem but them taking a header into the molten wax being run off is a greater irritation. Takes about 48 hours to do one fill of the tank, all done outside to avoid the smell tainting stuff in the shed. The tank is sizeable but not huge, and we put about 18" of water in the bottom then fill it right up with the pressings, after a few hours they have sunk down rather and we top it up with more pressings. It melts away gently (to keep the wax in decent condition) all the next day, and by the morning of day three its all ready to run off.
Thus no wax was rendered from the 2015 crop and so I am doing two years wax at once. Just past 4 tonnes now all in blocks ready to go for milling, maybe half a tonne or a bit more than that still to go. Will be glad when it finishes, the smell hands around for a good while. Even in the supermarket this afternoon the couple behind we were wondering why they could 'smell honey'.
We don't sell the wax normally, it all goes to a leading company for milling into foundation which comes back to use, and we pay a certain fee per pound for the service, and its a lot cheaper than we could possibly do it ourselves even with a good wax plant.
