Help Separating Honey from Cappings

[phillby]

Hi everybody I am new to the forum and beekeeping.

I have a question about honey and wax separation but first my limited history.

As you can see I'm in Australia, we think it is early Summer 40 Degrees C over (100 in your money) one day 15 degrees another ( quite cool ) the next. My wife has a cold from the temperature variation.

Anyway I have had a hive from mid September, I extracted 37 lb of honey from 6 frames mid November and another 48 lb from 8 frames this last weekend all from basically a starter hive of a few frames of brood and two of honey. the rest of the brood box was filled with old extruded comb and one super With new foundation. After the first extraction I added another super of new frames and foundation.

I first cut off the cappings with a home made steam knife ( it works well but is a bit heavy). I then drained the cappings through a strainer. I thought that if I put the strained cappings into a double boiler and heated them then the wax would float on the top of the small amount of honey that was left in the wax. What happened was the wax and honey combined into a soft emlusion.

Did I do some thing wrong? Am I being too greedy? Should I just add water to the mix and clarify the wax and then drain the water and then do it again just to get good clean wax.

I have clarified old frame wax like this before and was happy with the result but there seemed to be less honey in that wax.

I hope you can advise

Thanks

[Kathyp]

it should have worked.  melting the entire foundation to separate wax from honey was recommended to me by a beekeeper.  it was what he did before he had an extractor.

my guess?  not enough honey in the cappings to really make a separation. 

[Brian D. Bray]

It is almost impossible to get all the honey out of the wax.  The procedure of melting the wax and the honey will work if there is a sufficient amount of honey mixed in with the wax.  If little honey is in the mix the honey will stay bound to the wax.  It is best to strain as thuroughly as possible and not worry about the little dab that remains with the wax.

[mick]

I have noticed that when you melt wax and honey ala double boiler, if you stir the mix or mash it, you get the horrrible mixture of wax and honey. I think the trick is to leave it alone, dont fiddle with it, dont encourage it to break down and let it cool down naturally till its stone cold.

[Kathyp]

if he doesn't care about that little bit of honey, he could remelt the whole thing with water.  the honey would dissolve in the water and the wax would solidify on top.

i have a double boiler that i got at goodwill.  it's my wax pot.  the inside pan has holes in it.  when the wax is hard i can lift the inside pot out and the wax comes with it...the water drains back into the bottom pot.  seems to work pretty well.

[Scott Derrick]

I read on another post recently that someone rinsed the wax with water after crushing and straining to remove some of the remaining honey. You can then feed the honey water to your bees. It should also make the was a little cleaner. I plan on doing that this year with the wax and honey that I get from my Kenyan Hive.

Scott

[swingbyte]

Hi all,
I just let gravity strain the cappings, whats left I place ontop of the hive mat and let the bees clean up.  A couple of days later I retrieve the cleaned cappings and replace with more.  I have decided its not worth the effort to clean the cappings myself, I let the bees do it and then recover it the nect time I extract.

Swingbyte

[tig]

i usually let it drip overnight in a strainer or screen.  whats left the next day i let the bees clean up

[Kirk-o]

I put cappings and comb in cheese cloth spin in extractor or let drip through strainer
kirko

[amymcg]

I set mine out in a big bucket, two days later, they are as dry as a bone.

[reinbeau]

Hi all,
I just let gravity strain the cappings, whats left I place ontop of the hive mat and let the bees clean up.  A couple of days later I retrieve the cleaned cappings and replace with more.  I have decided its not worth the effort to clean the cappings myself, I let the bees do it and then recover it the nect time I extract.

Swingbyte

This is exactly what I did.  It was amazing how clean they got the cappings.  Make sure, however, that you put the cappings far enough away to not encourage robbing.  My hives are 150' behind my house, the cappings went in my front garden on the other side of the house.



Also make sure there really isn't a lot of honey left in the cappings.  No matter what, some bees will drown.  I was amazed at how many bees ended up in that pan, at one point there were thousands of them, a real feeding frenzy!  At the end of the night when I went out to bring the cappings in after the girls had gone home to their hives there were, unfortunately, 17 dead bees in the pan, drowned or stuck  :(

Ann

[phillby]

Thanks everyone.

Sorry I havn't been round for a while but you know how it is.

I think Mick was on the money with his suggestion
"I have noticed that when you melt wax and honey ala double boiler, if you stir the mix or mash it, you get the horrrible mixture of wax and honey. I think the trick is to leave it alone, dont fiddle with it, dont encourage it to break down and let it cool down naturally till its stone cold."[/color]

A book " Keeping Bees " by  Peter Buckley suggests putting cappings in an oven at at 70 C melting the wax and letting it cool in the oven overnight. I had  the cappings from 8 frames and even though the had been strained for two days in a temperature controlled environment at 32 C  I was able to recover 300 gms (half a pound of honey for me). I wouldn't sell it as it had all its goodness rmoved from the heating.

I am about to investigate the making of a solar wax melter from the plans section.

[Finsky]

If you melt wax to get honey away, taste of honey will be ruined. When you crush cappings and let them run on sieve in warm place +40 C, honey will go away. Ofcourse a lot honey will remain but it is not worth to spoil all yiled.  Honey gets taste of melted wax.

[TwT]

Did I do some thing wrong? Am I being too greedy? Should I just add water to the mix and clarify the wax and then drain the water and then do it again just to get good clean wax.

I have clarified old frame wax like this before and was happy with the result but there seemed to be less honey in that wax.

I hope you can advise

Thanks

from reading this it almost sounds like you didn't have water in the pot when you tried this, if you get about 1/4-1/2 pot of water and melt the wax in with the water it will seperate the honey from the wax, the honey will disolve in the water and and then just leave pot alone and the wax will cool to be solid... cooking wax in water will seperate wax and honey...... then wax will be floating on the top and it will cool solid, if you dont cook wax in water the honey has no place to go except the wax....