# Straining honey (re-visited again)



## sc-bee (May 10, 2005)

I pulled my very first honey crop this year. I found the process of extracting a lot more labor intensive than I expected (my 13 year old and I spent about 6 hours on five shallows, not counting clean-up time). I know go ahead and laugh--better yet I will do it far you HA-HA-HA, I couldn't find the laugh icon. 
I am sure a lot of this was due to not being familiar with the process. I used a four frame extractor(not radial)--had to go slow because I was advised not to wire shallow frames and was having excessive blow-outs (will wire now). I then strained through 600-400 and 200 micron bucket strainers.
Was this excessive on the straining. I have run a search and read about paint strainers- organdy (but honey has to be 110 degrees to flow thru good)and tulle to name a few. 
It seems a lot of people relate honey clarity to quality.(Which I don't but of course I don't want legs etc.) But have to give the customer what they won't to the ones that prefer clearer honey. What system do you use and did anyone determine what size strainer removes the pollen (which I don't want to do)? Does 200 micron (which some stated was actually a 250 micron) remove the pollen. 
Definitely would like to be more efficient next time. Thanks for any help!!!

[ August 10, 2006, 07:49 AM: Message edited by: sc-bee ]


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## power napper (Apr 2, 2005)

sc-bee--good job, at least you have some honey!
In all the previous years we just strained the honey through a leg of a new pair of panty hose and then threw the panty hose with the wax into our solar wax melter--works fine. This year we purchased the stainless two piece strainer to find out if it is any better or easier to use, do not know as of yet because we do not have any honey to extract ("come on bees").Temperature at extraction time seems to be the most important variable at our kitchen and the honey should sit for a couple days after extraction to float all the air and wax particles to the top for removal. Sounds like us here, we learn more every year!


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## Dan Williamson (Apr 6, 2004)

I use the two piece stainless strainer over a 5 gal bucket. I open the gate on the extractor and empty into the 5 gal bucket thru the strainer. This produces fairly clean honey but still somewhat cloudy. 

You can buy a plastic two piece strainer from Betterbee that also works well. 

To get the honey clear, I take a plastic uncapping tub (Mann Lake I think) that has two parts. The top part sits on top of the lower and has a piece of removeable metal excluder on the floor. I wrap the exluder with one or two layers of the nylon cloth you can buy at the bee supply places. I can dump at least 10 gal of honey into the top and it strains thru the cloth into the lower area. 

The lower part has a plastic honey gate that can be used to bottle or to fill bulk containers (whichever you choose). I tend to do it all at once and store the VERY CLEAR honey in 5 gal containers until ready to bottle. 

It certainly help to have warm honey. I typically do this when the room is approx 95 deg or higher. With a dehumidifier running the heat doesn't bother you much and it can only help keep the moisture low while working with the honey.

The nice thing about the way that I do it is that the exluder area is a fairly wide area and the warm honey takes very little time to filter thru.

You can accomplish the same purpose by putting the filter cloth in between the two parts of the stainless strainer as it comes out of the extractor into the bucket. You eliminate a step but the process is much slower for me as I end up with a filter that gets clogged up. Doing it this way for me doesn't work well when doing a decent amount of volume but would work fine for only a few supers.

I'm sure there are many other ways to filter. This is just what consistently works for me.

Enough babbling. Best wishes.

[ August 10, 2006, 08:37 AM: Message edited by: Dan Williamson ]


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## Dan Williamson (Apr 6, 2004)

It has been mentioned before although I can't find it. 

When looking for LOCAL nylon material to use to filter honey what exactly do I look for? Is there anything particular in the fabric stores that I should focus on that would be comparable? 

The nylon cloth from the bee suppliers is fairly expensive.

Thanks.

[ August 10, 2006, 09:37 AM: Message edited by: Dan Williamson ]


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## Dave W (Aug 3, 2002)

Dan . . .

Go to fabric store and ask for material to make a wedding veil







(or use paint filters from Home Depot).


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## BULLSEYE BILL (Oct 2, 2002)

I recomend that you use something finer than 200 microns. The years I did not my honey crystalized much faster.


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## sc-bee (May 10, 2005)

Like what Bill???

Do you use more than one size???

[ August 10, 2006, 09:03 PM: Message edited by: sc-bee ]


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## BULLSEYE BILL (Oct 2, 2002)

Out of the extractor I use the double stainless screens. Out of the capping tank I use the 400 Micron bucket screen.

All the honey goes through the 200 Micron bucket screen then through the nylon filter cloth from Brushy Mountain. They also offer a filter bag that is very fine too.


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## honeyman46408 (Feb 14, 2003)

knee high stockings ""NEW""


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## forestbee (Sep 11, 2003)

I always wondered how many micron is the "nylon cloth" do anyone know?

I used just nylon cloth couple of years ago with a great success, Last year I didn't strain at all but the honey granulated so fast, this year I bought a Dadant inline filter and built for it a filter out of nylon cloth "double layer" so far it worked great, and I didn't need to heat the honey too high, will it granulate fast? I will know in few months.


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