Well the last two days have bee interesting to say the least.
I (as mentioned earlier) took the super of small X frames and did a crush and strain. And what a fine mess I got myself into. Everything started off simple and easy I crushed the comb in a 20lt bucket and left it to settle out for nearly 2 days. The comb rose to the top and the honey sank. I seemed to have about 1/3 honey at the bottom rising to a thin layer of comb on top I removed about 2/3rds of the bucket to a second bucket The bottom honey was put through a large sieve with the finest mesh I could find and it went though fairly easily Then I put the honey/comb mix into the sieve and let it drain overnight.
This morning I was quite pleased with what I had and commenced to put honey into large jars There were 3 full jars with a net weight of near 1.75 Kg each. Having done that I could see little specs of wax, not many and very tiny. In my quest for perfection I took some muslin left over from last year’s Xmas pudding and with a double layer for even more filtration started to refine this honey further. Well after 4 hours not one drop had gone through the muslin. Thinking this double layer was the problem I attempted to go to a single layer.
Up until this point I had kept the mess to a reasonable level with water and cloth to hand to keep everything clean and tidy.
When untying the string which held the muslin over the bucket everything started to slip into the bucket. Attempting to halt this slide, honey started oozing out of every nook and cranny of the now bag like honey strainer. I had it all over my hands, quite a bit went down the side of the bucket as my one eye aligned me off centre of the bucket. Things were deteriorating rapidly and in the end I had honey over clothes, body, bucket, floor and much less than I started with. All in all I lost about 1/3 of the honey I was trying to refine.
I came quickly to the conclusion this would be the honey for friends and rellies. They could refine this further if they so desired or not. I went back to the straight sieve arrangement and
in the end I got about 14Kg of honey and estimate about 5 kg of honey went down the drain.
The honey was just on 15% and I could tell straight away it would come up with low water because of the difficulty in cleaning of hands and implements during the process.
Lessons learnt for crush and strain :
Plan better 2. Prepare better and 3. Old fuddies like me should stick to Flowsupers
It is sad it went pear shaped for you Wilfred. But you are not the first to have it happen. Even the best made plans can go sour.
Last year I made a very basic mistake when I was filtering honey out of my extractor in a 20 litre pail and was so pleased with how it was going I decided on a coffee break. Stupid didn’t check how full the pail was so I was up till 3am cleaning up the overflow off my kitchen floor.
Too complacent thinking it was just another walk in the park extracting honey.
Cheers
Awww, Wilf, so sorry @busso! Thank you for making me laugh though. Stories like this are the reason that both hubby and I love our Flow frames.
I crushed and strained a little honey this year - I had some frames for cut comb, and I crushed the remnants around the edge. I crushed in a large kitchen colander with a 5 gallon paint straining bag under it , which was lining a 5 gallon bucket. Worked very well. The mesh of the paint straining bag was fine enough to stop the wax and coarse enough not to block. I have also used a clean new pair of ladies tights in the past, with the leg parts tied off to avoid messy hilarity…
Hi Peter, I’ve had the odd spill. I use my “hey-google” all the time now while extracting. I get it to “wake me up” within a certain time, to remind me to check the honey level in the bin while extracting. It’s so easy to get into a zone, which can result in a sticky mess on the floor.
I use it all the time while baking bread.
I started out asking it to call me in 30 minutes for example. It said it would call me in 30 minutes from now on. However it didn’t call me. It took me a while to work out that google thought I was asking it to call me “in thirty minutes” as my name. So now if I ask google what my name is, she replies “I call you late for dinner”.
It’s handy while baking bread. If I have 3 minutes to go in the oven for example, I just ask it to wake me in 3 minutes. Fantastic.
I saw these advertised at the hardware store but balked when I couldn’t find what material they were made from. At the time I thought them to be ideal.
The paint strainers are made of nylon as @Dawn_SD has said, I use them and amazed at how much rubbish is filtered out of what seems like clean honey Wilfred. even after filtering through the double stainless steel strainer. You will save a heap if you buy using EBay, it seems they are all made in China including those sold in your local paint shops.
Cheers
Thanks for that. Now I must try them.
I was going to say,“If I fail I suppose I could always snip the corners out and SWMBO can use them as tights” but that would be a bit derogatory so I won’t say that.
Just to make you feel even better @busso… The paint strainer bags that I bought for less than $1 each from Amazon (made by a respected US paint specialist) are identical in every way (even the stitching and elastic tops) to the expensive $8 honey straining bags from a major beekeeping supplies company.
2. Prepare better 
and 3. Old fuddies like me should stick to Flowsupers 
Only kidding. Yes, I do know that is not what you really meant… 