![]() ![]() These can be picked up very cheaply from car boot sales or for nothing from. This is not really suited to high temperatures, but appears to do the trick.Īs an aside, a slow-cooker provides a great way to melt wax. To avoid this I added strips of rubberized self-adhesive draft excluder to the upper surface of the floor edge lip and the lower surface of the lid edge lip. Don’t use it when bees are flying or you’ll be inundated.Īfter quite a bit of use I’d noticed that the flush joints between the floor/mesh, the brood box and the lid provided opportunities for the steam to escape, so lowering the temperature and making the extraction less efficient. It probably doesn’t need adding … run the extractor out of doors! Not only does it generate a lot of steam, but it tends to irregularly drip from various unsealed ( i.e. Thorne’s reckon that wax recovery with steam is about 95% efficient. If there was residual honey in the frames you will also need to wash this away. The wax generated is not particularly clean and will need further filtering. Place a container with an inch or so of water under the spout and turn on the steamer. ![]() Finally, add a block of wood under the back of the box to tip it up and encourage melted wax to pour out of the spout. Fit the lid in place and clamp the entire thing together with some ratchet straps. If you’re extracting from offcuts of brace comb, grafted queen cells and all the other bits scraped up and collected during the season, simply spread these across the mesh. To extract from frames simply fit them into the brood box, squeezing a dozen in if you can – there’s space above and below for the steam to circulate well. To use the steamer place the floor on a hive stand, add the mesh and a brood box (either dedicated for the purpose or one that would benefit from being steam sterilised – I use a plywood bait hive that’s a bit deeper than a normal brood box, allowing me to add frames and some brace comb scraps). In the meantime I created two Perspex “clamps” through which the hose end fits, with the Perspex bolted through the lid to hold everything in place (see the photos as it’s easier to illustrate than describe). However, I’m still searching for something that fits properly. The best way to do this would be to fix a threaded tube to the lid. The last thing to arrange is to secure the steam hose to the lid. I just use a sheet of ply for the lid, held on securely using ratchet straps. You need a solid floor, lined to prevent wax sticking to it, some sort of mesh screen to prevent too much contamination of the melted wax with propolis, cocoons or lumps of pollen, a brood box and a tightly fitting lid through which the steam is piped. If you are going to buy one ensure it has an auto-cutoff should the tank run dry – this allows you to run the steam extractor unattended. You only need the tank and hose from the wallpaper stripper so might even be able to pick up one with a missing “business end” from a car boot sale. It takes about 30 minutes to extract 11 brood frames and quite a bit of brace comb which, with a 2kW element, makes it economical to run. I bought an Earlex SS125UKP which has a 4 litre tank and runs for a little over an hour (~£20). The make is unimportant but ensure it has a reasonably sized reservoir and so generates steam for a long time. Steam is generated using a wallpaper stripper. ![]()
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