Another brilliant idea dontcha think

[mick]

What say I get two plastic cutting boards and trim them to fit exactly inside a frame. I place one ontop of a brick in a metal dish. I put the frame of honey on this. I then put the other board. Then I apply weight.

Im looking for all of the honey to be pressed out of the frame leaving a flattened sheet of wax, still with the wires embedded, ready for re use.

Do you think this could work???

[Michael Bush]

If you flatten a comb the bees will have to tear it all down to rebuild it anyway.  Any kind of press works, so it will probably work to get the honey out.  But then so does crushing with your hands and just straining it.

[Cindi]

Mick
Hmm..that sounds interesting, so does just crushing with the hand.  I think your idea would indeed work well.  But now I am thinking.  When I was decapping the honey, I placed all the cappings on fine mesh that was straddled and fastened down with clothes pegs over a clear storage container.  I was surprised at how much honey dripped from these cappings for quite some time. I eventually took all the cappings, which had most of the honey dripped out and put them into some cheese cloth.  It is still actually sitting in the cheesecloth in a bucket.  It is very heavy.  I have not had a chance to try and get the remainder of the honey from these cappings, just too busy doing other stuff.  So, now I am thinking that yes indeed, a press of some sort would work really well.  I am thinking that getting two plastic cutting boards and squeezing these cappings with some kind of weight would work well.  You have inspired me to think about things that I have not even thought about.   

My problem here is on another note.  I have gathered much propolis from scraping the pieces of my frames, hives, etc.  It is pretty clean, but I also have a bunch that is not so clean, it has quite a bit of wax with it.  I want to create a "lump" of propolis, so I am trying to find out how to get the wax separated from the propolis efficiently.  I have tried water, separating the wax from propolis, but not overly successful.  Any clues, I am sure that many beekeepers save their propolis and would like it to be pretty clean.

I love the aroma of propolis.  I have a couple of jars on my counter that are of the clean propolis that are from different times of the season and they all have slightly different scents.  There is one that is not as pleasant as the others though.  When I open the bottle it smells so strongly just like the resin my father used to use when he fibreglassed sundecks.  I was very amazed at the similarity with the fibreglass resin he used and the propolis gathered from my hives, obviously very much the same product in one way or another.  I love to open one particular bottle and take a good sniff.  It takes me back to the scents that pervase in summertime....oh for the summer.  Great day.  Cindi