Get Your Honey Extracting Equipment From Nuplas Apiarist Supplies

When you’re ready for your honey bees to start producing honey from your beehive, you need to get hold of the appropriate kind of honey-extracting equipment, and most of these tools are available from Nuplas Apiarist Supplies.

Honey extraction is the central process in beekeeping of removing honey from honeycomb so that it is isolated in a pure liquid form. Normally, the honey is stored by honey bees in their beeswax honeycomb; however, Nuplas provide cutting edge plastic technology which supports their innovative plastic frames. The honey frames are typically harvested in the late summer, when they will be most filled with honey. On a completely filled frame, the cells will be capped over by the bees for storage; that is, each cell containing honey will be sealed with a capping made of beeswax.

The first step in the extraction process is to break or remove all of the cappings, and this may be accomplished using an automated uncapper machine or with a manually-operated uncapping knife. Usually, these tools are used together, along with a pronged cappings fork. To facilitate cutting off these wax cappings, the knife is often heated. The removed bits of wax, called cappings, are rich in honey which can be slowly drained off with the help of some heating. This 'cappings wax' is very valuable and often used to make candles or other products.

 Automated uncapping machines normally work by abrading the surface of the wax with moving chains or bristles or hot knives. This, while messy, makes the process easier than doing this task manually. Once uncapped, the frames are then placed in a honey extractor, which spins them so that most of the honey is removed by centrifugal force. Care must be taken to ensure that all frames are loaded correctly, as the comb is angled slightly upwards to prevent the honey flowing out; if loaded incorrectly, this can also prevent the honey flowing out during extraction. Once extracted, the resulting honey will contain bits of wax and must be passed through a screen so that clean liquid honey results.

The extracted honey needs to be strained before you bottle it. This step removes the little bits of wax, wood, and the occasional sticky bee. Nice, stainless-steel honey strainers are made just for this purpose and are available from Nuplas, so for more information on plastic bee hives, commercial beekeeping equipment, beekeeping supplies and honey extractors please go to http://nuplasapiaristsupplies.com.au .