LSR wrote:
> Dominic Richens wrote:
>> with the fork, you get lots of little bits of wax in the extracted
>> honey.
>> with the knife, you get honey in the wax!
>
> Several people have re****ted good results using a hot-air gun. You'll
need
> one with adjustable heat settings.
> The thin wax capping melts well before the comb and surface tension
pulls it
> to the edge of the cell.
> I haven't yet tried it myself!
>
I have tried this once (and only once!)
it may work OK if all your cappings have an airspace below them, however
my bees don't always leave any air space, I did not find that it worked
well, the way I now do it is to use Manley frames and cut the comb to
the level of the top & bottom bars, this leaves you with nice straight
combs for the bees to re-use but means that you end up with a lot of
honey in the cappings as you can be cutting a quarter of an inch or more
of comb off each side, I drain these in a large stainless steel strainer
(one of the ones intended to fit over a sink)and then melt the remaining
honey & wax and use the resulting honey for cooking / winemaking.
I also use an uncapping fork as it is useful for any low areas of comb
that the knife misses.
The other advantage of this method is that you end up with plenty of
nice clean wax to trade for foundation or make candles with.
Ben.
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