Holding tank, what is it, when to use it?

D Coates · January 21, 2011, 07:06:31 PM

What's a holding tank and how many hives do you need to have to need something like this? Currently I use 4 and 5 gallon buckets while extracting from a 2 frame reversable but I'm getting a larger 20 frame extractor so I'll have higher volume in shorter periods. I've got the opportunity to buy a used 30+ gallon holding tank and or a 50 gallon holding tank. Not sure if my "bucket brigade" will cut it and didn't know if a holding tank is the answer.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

iddee · January 21, 2011, 07:29:56 PM

Any tank with a honey gate on the side. The sediment goes to the top and bottom after a couple days and the clean honey is tapped from above the bottom sediment.

G3farms · January 21, 2011, 11:02:25 PM

Might want to think ahead of your honey house set up. If you get the bigger extractor and a large holding tank, how are you going to get the honey into the tank.........pump, five gallon buckets, or elevated extractor.

D Coates · January 22, 2011, 12:53:26 PM

I was thinking I would use 5 gallon buckets filled from the extractor and poured into the holding tank at this point. I'm trying to decide if this is overkill. I've got 11 producing hives but I'm slowly growing.

woodchopper · January 22, 2011, 03:50:34 PM

Quote from: D Coates on January 22, 2011, 12:53:26 PM
I was thinking I would use 5 gallon buckets filled from the extractor and poured into the holding tank at this point. I'm trying to decide if this is overkill. I've got 11 producing hives but I'm slowly growing.

We had 11 hives this past year and will have 15-20 in 2011 depending on how many die over the winter. Holding tanks are nice but we decided to just buy some honey gates and make up four more extracting buckets. Much cheaper and they take up less room in the cellar when stacked.

ArmucheeBee · January 22, 2011, 07:37:13 PM

You can get a food grade barrel of various sizes and slap on a gate for under $70, so think about that too. Don't pay too much for something with a fancy name.

Bee-Bop · January 22, 2011, 07:51:37 PM

Are you going to use this size for immediate bottling,are for storage for a long period of time, if so do you have a means to heat this much in case it begins to harden.

You have probably already got this worked out.

Bee-Bop

Vance G · January 22, 2011, 08:51:30 PM

A holding/settling tank is a good thing to have in my opinion. I just bought a thirty gallon one because I got a good deal. In that I could have found a cheaper container and put a gate in it, the other commenter is correct and I did pay more than I had to. This is my thinking. I have a working waterbed heater. I am going to wrap it around the tank and keep the tank around a hundred degrees. This allows the honey to clarify and the stray bee lips and ears to float to the top to be skimmed off. If that doesn't work, I will build a big card board box around it and put a hundred watt real incadescent light bulb in thee box to warm the honey up. The Tank will pretty well eliminate your need for a bunch of messy sticky wasteful strainers and gooey cheesecloth. I am assuming that you are not setting frames in gravel and that the contaminants in your honey will all be organic and float out to the top of the warm honey! am a believer in extracting honey as they make it. With the tank, I will have someplace to keep it as I do small batches of supers. Those extracted wet supers put back on hives when there is a honey flow, get re-filled at an amazing rate. Plus, i plan on selling honey and I want a uniform product untill I learn whether separate flows are strong enough to justify collecting separate varietal honey which is a big plus at the farmeres market. When you ask the guy walking by if he wants to taste the honey, most will grunt that they know what honey tastes like. Then you calmly challenge him with the fact you have three varieties that all taste different. The you pull off a thumb nail sized piece of homemade white bread and offer it. Buy frozen bread dough if you don't cook. Pull off little pieces lightly roll them into small balls and pack them into a greased bread pan and bake. Experiment till you get good little 3/8" buns for samples. This is the second time I have started in bees and I really wished the first time I had a settling trank. I guess that is the bottom line. It's all part of the fun. Life would be really boring if we knew what we were always going to do.