Spinning unwired comb

[gavin]

Has anyone tried comb from thin unwired foundation in a radial extractor? In the car having just taken the rape crop from mine, and yes, I was short of made up wired frames so I gave them unwired 'temporarily'.

Just thinking (over-optimistically) the forces on a frame parked side-on in the extractor might not make it crumple?

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[nellyp]

I have some supers with unwired frames, If you are careful then yes they work esp with thinner runny honey. Thicker honey I found harder to remove and some combs did break up and any with pollen certainly broke up.

[Rosie]

Has anyone tried comb from thin unwired foundation in a radial extractor? In the car having just taken the rape crop from mine, and yes, I was short of made up wired frames so I gave them unwired 'temporarily'.

Just thinking (over-optimistically) the forces on a frame parked side-on in the extractor might not make it crumple?

All my comb is unwired and mostly foundationless too. I virtually never get a broken comb even if it's not fully drawn. You have to have extremely soft rubber anti-vibration mounts under the feet of the extractor though.

[gavin]

Superb, thanks folks. I'm about to try it out - not with rubber suspension mounts unfortunately, but I'll balance it carefully, stand on the stand's feet in my slippers, and hug the thing tightly as I spin. It would be great to have drawn thin foundation comb for the heather crop.

[fatshark]

You have to have extremely soft rubber anti-vibration mounts under the feet of the extractor though.

Does this work better than the more usual solution of castors? I've just got a new radial extractor and was going to add castors to stop it dancing around the room on the the very few occasions (Ha!) I don't have 9 frames of perfectly drawn and evenly filled, regular comb in it.

Keep it warm before you extract it Gavin … but not too warm or the wax will go soft. A fine line between crystallisation and inevitable collapse or softening wax and, er, inevitable collapse. Good luck :D

[gavin]

The kitchen is duly sweltering. The beekeeper lightly dressed. Damn, I *knew* I should have put some curtains up ......

[Rosie]

Superb, thanks folks. I'm about to try it out - not with rubber suspension mounts unfortunately, but I'll balance it carefully, stand on the stand's feet in my slippers, and hug the thing tightly as I spin. It would be great to have drawn thin foundation comb for the heather crop.

I hate to be a wet blanket Gavin but I suspect you will be disappointed with that strategy. The idea is to get that natural frequency of the extractor as low as possible so that it is far from the high(er) rotational (and hence driving) frequency. It's the same theory as a spin dryer which you have noticed is as floppy as hell. You need extremely soft suspension and a heavy non-rotating mass such as an extractor half filled with honey or a spin drier with a concrete brick attached to it. You might be able to suspend the extractor from above with bungies. That's the sort of freedom it needs.

You might think you are a big softee but you are far too stiff to hold on to it.

fatshark - I have never tried the castor trick but I have seen others try it and I don't think it's as good as my soft rubber mounts and they also tend to mark the floor or even drill holes in floor covering.

[gavin]

Well, 50lbs of honey extracted, most of it ending up in the intended buckets, and out of 22 frames I smashed three. Two of them were in the last of three runs, and as the machine was lightly loaded for that one I was able to crank the handle a lot harder so it isn't surprising that I blasted them to bits. As far as I could see the bear hug/dodgy dancing method worked quite well. Thanks everyone for giving me the confidence not to just scrape them all down and press them. I'm calling that a success and the comb breakage rate isn't far from what I used to get with wired foundation.

The next stage is to get the bees to remove all remnants of OSR from these combs in time for the bumper 2014 lime flow and the heather. There are still another couple being filled which might be worth extracting in a week or so. They still seem to be bringing in OSR though all the nearest fields are over.

[fatshark]

Rosie - do the soft rubber mounts need to be attached or could you simply stand the extractor on a foam mattress?

However, I see another problem from your description … the "heavy non-rotating mass such as an extractor half filled with honey".
In my dreams ;)
(in reality I run mine with the gate open to avoid the honey level reaching the ends of the frames and straining the motor).

[Rosie]

Well done Gavin. I used to break combs with my bear hug technique.

Fatshark, my rubber mounts are fitted between the extractor feet and a wooden frame. The frame has stiff rubber feet to protect and grip the floor. I would guess a foam mattress might help but would be awkward to manage and might cause you a sticky night's sleep afterwards!

[gavin]

(in reality I run mine with the gate open to avoid the honey level reaching the ends of the frames and straining the motor).

My reality was remembering to close the gate most of the time, but forgetting that once .......

Newspaper is a great boon to those pouring half a pound of honey on their kitchen floor. No iPad that I'm aware of would be so good at gathering up the spilt amber fluid. Time for a shout for the Glasgow Herald. Just about the only paper I know still in broadsheet format, although last night I just had the tabloid format Courier for company.

I did try hard to balance the extractor to minimise wobble, that probably helped (a little lab experience comes in handy for that sort of thing). I like your rubber feet ideas Steve. One day when I've enough time to be organised ....

[Feckless Drone]

The next stage is to get the bees to remove all remnants of OSR from these combs in time for the bumper 2014 lime flow and the heather. There are still another couple being filled which might be worth extracting in a week or so. They still seem to be bringing in OSR though all the nearest fields are over.

Hi - Bikram beekeeping/extracting Gavin, might catch on and perhaps with a bit of crowd funding we could do a startup and call it Plan B. Well maybe not. Anyway, sounds like a good yield so I expect to be selling your honey this year at the Dundee flower show. I noticed that there was a alot of pollen in the frames I extracted this week. Any suggestions (from anyone) how to deal with that? I don't want to use these OSR frames for the summer crop so would prefer to just tidy up and store them but worried about the pollen going foosty.

[gavin]

Hi - Bikram beekeeping/extracting Gavin, might catch on and perhaps with a bit of crowd funding we could do a startup and call it Plan B.

Like it! You can certainly feel the power of the hive if you wrap yourself around a manual 9-frame extractor going full pelt. None of that motorised nonsense for me!

As for the pollen, this afternoon I will try to make it up to my angry bees by returning supers for cleaning. Swithering about putting them underneath. After a couple of days if there is still pollen in there I'll pick it out with something pointy before storing the supers for use with a cut comb crop.

[busybeephilip]

I usually try to balance everything best as possible, its that single comb of pollen or granulated honey that makes the thing go out of balance when the motor is at full pelt and your hanging on for dear life lest the thing takes off. Had thought of getting the castors set up but .. do they really help ?

[gavin]

I think that we need a new initiative linking SBAi with YouTube: videos of beekeepers hanging on for dear life, doing that Bikram thing FD was thinking of turning into a new therapy (or simply a money-making venture).

[crabbitdave]

Morning all I lift a super of unwired osr yesterday, I turned my nine frame radial in to a 3 frame tangential using a couple of broken queen excluders, with 100% success I wish I could say the same for my honey crop due to the poor weather it's been it's went from 3 supers on each hive to one and feeding my splits heavily, a good summer is now 7 years and counting :/


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