I've just spent nearly two days processing this year's harvest. The season is short up here and the harvest usually modest so I take the honey off only once, unless I change the supers to unwired frames for the heather. Some years the heather crop is so small this seems a considerable effort for little benefit. Besides, the mixed floral honey including heather is much sought after up here. Truly delicious!
Last year I was able to extract successfully having rolled the combs fairly vigorously with a metal honey loosener. Heather honey probably made up about 25% of the total.
This year the supers were light before the heather, which bloomed magnificently in glorious weather, and ling honey probably constitutes about 75% of the total. The combs were thoroughly rolled, the boxes were pre-warmed and the room hot, but still we had to leave lots of honey in the frames to feed back to the bees. (Reluctant as I am to crush them into the press.)
So I'm wondering about equipment. Has anyone experience of using:
- Thorne's Smith cutter/scraper to cut the comb off the foundation
- or the Honey loosener available from, for instance Abelo at £95 http://www.abelo.co.uk/shop/heather-loosener/
Do they work well and how slow are they to use?
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