I haven’t harvested honey for over a year and the honey frames are stuck rigid. Frames are full but tool won’t move the cells to start honey flowing.
Is the honey crystallized? You can tell by pushing a cocktail stick through the caps of a couple of cells and looking for a granular appearance when you pull it out. If it is, it won’t flow, and you will need some other way of getting it out of the frames.
Not crystalised. Extremely frustrating.
Ross West
Then my first idea would be to insert the Flow key (or preferably 2 Flow keys side by side) into the frame just 10% of the way and turn. It takes much less force to open a small section of the frame than to do the whole thing at once.
If the mechanism has been gummed up with propolis (happens if you leave the super on for a long time with periods of slow nectar flow), then you may need to carefully scratch off the cappings, trying not to damage the plastic. You can then put the frames into a borrowed spinner, if you have a friend with one, and spin the honey out. You will need to clean the propolis off the frames after that.
If it could be ti tree or jellybush honey, then it is going to be difficult. You can still scrape off the cappings when the bees are low on stores and let them take the honey. You will probably not be able to harvest it yourself though… 