# Dedicated hot room



## jmgi (Jan 15, 2009)

I don't have a hot room, but I do heat up my supers for extracting by stacking them on a few empty supers with a 100 watt light bulb under them, use an inner cover on top with the hole open, leave them for a couple days to get the honey thoroughly warmed, I don't get the temperature higher than 95-100 which is more than warm enough to extract easily. John


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## Charlie B (May 20, 2011)

jmgi,

Do you use a thermostat to regulate the temperature or do you really need one. How do you keep honey from dripping on the light bulb.


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## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

100 degrees is good.


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## atlbeekeeper (Jan 5, 2013)

Sqkcrk,
Walter Kelly has a blog that has some information about hot rooms.
https://kelleybees.com/blog/2012/05/your-honey-house-part-2/ 
This might give you some ideas.


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## BMAC (Jun 23, 2009)

I like the above blog. Its an excellent reminder of what needs to be kept in mind while setting it up. Well to start my hot/warm room I thought about building one and started pricing everything and thinking about how large I need the room to be. 

How many pallets of supers do I really need to warm at one time? I think 10 to 12 pallets at a time should be adequate. I should be able to extract 2 - 3 pallets per day so that will give me 5 - 6 days worth of extracting. That should be fast enough to keep the hive beetles from making a mess.

After thinking about it longer and with the thought of having a truly mobile extracting facility I decided to buy a cooling truck box. THe one I bought is 18 feet long inside the box and I think about 7.5 feet wide and around 6 to 6.5 feet high inside. It already has excellent insulation so I dont have to insulate it. I bought it at a fraction of the price it would cost to build one and its MOBILE!


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## jim lyon (Feb 19, 2006)

105 degrees is a pretty good number keeping in mind that it takes a few days for honey temp to merge with air temps and that with the threat of shb honey probably shouldnt sit for more than about 4 days. Leaving a space for air flow greatly helps and a heated floor is infinity better than an overhead heat source. We don't usually bother even turning on our heated floor until the nights start cooling down in early September.


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## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

You want your honey warm enough to make it flow well coming out of the comb, BUT, not so warm that the comb gets so soft that it collapses creating a big mess. So, 100 degrees is a good temperature to shoot for. You will also benefit from air circulation, ie fans.

One has to keep in mind how supers will be handled. wearhouse pallets and a pallet jack or individual super stack pallets and a hand cart. How much room do you have to move all these things around?

There is more than just temperature to keep in mind.

Thanks for the link.


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## BMAC (Jun 23, 2009)

The floor of the reefer box has grooves running front to back. I am going to lay 1/2" copper wate line in the grooves (I think the grooves are and inch deep) with it hooked to my outside wood fired boiler. I am also planning to place 3 ceiling fans in it to circulate the air inside. Bottom heat and fan circulation should do it shouldn't it?


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## BMAC (Jun 23, 2009)

sqkcrk said:


> You want your honey warm enough to make it flow well coming out of the comb, BUT, not so warm that the comb gets so soft that it collapses creating a big mess. So, 100 degrees is a good temperature to shoot for. You will also benefit from air circulation, ie fans.
> 
> One has to keep in mind how supers will be handled. wearhouse pallets and a pallet jack or individual super stack pallets and a hand cart. How much room do you have to move all these things around?


So the current plan is to use combination of skid steer, pallet jacks and 36 by 36 inch super pallets. The skid steer will move pallets between warm room and honey house, and the pallet jack will be used to manipulate the pallet in the honey house and warm room.

Good point about over warming the comb.


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## jim lyon (Feb 19, 2006)

Interesting that the Kelly blog talks about a dehumidifier and in our climate the problem we have is low humidity and drip pans turning to taffy when the floor is warm. Spraying water on the exposed floor every few hours helps greatly.


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## Michael Palmer (Dec 29, 2006)

My hot room is 10'x30'. Has radiant head in the slab. My usual temperature for extracting is 100. Since I use a Gunness chain uncapped, hotter folds over the cells. I added extra hot water tubes in the hot room slab. So, I can crank up the heat to 120 and liquify drums of honey if necessary. The room will liquify 50 drums in a week and a half.


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## Ian (Jan 16, 2003)

I keep my hot room at 35 degrees C. 
If Im bringing boxes with bees in, Ill turn the room temp down to between 25 and 30 degrees C until the bees clear. At 30 degrees and hotter they dont clear near as well and dont bunch on the window, but spread all over the walls and floor.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

jmgi said:


> I don't have a hot room, but I do heat up my supers for extracting by stacking them on a few empty supers with a 100 watt light bulb under them, use an inner cover on top with the hole open, leave them for a couple days to get the honey thoroughly warmed, I don't get the temperature higher than 95-100 which is more than warm enough to extract easily. John


i do something similar, with a floor fan turned horizontally at the bottom of the stack, blowing air up through the stack. i set a small space heater next to the stack, and use a thermometer to keep the temp between 90-95. i also have a heating wire wrapped around the extractor.

the side benefit has been that my water content has been measuring about 16%.


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## jmgi (Jan 15, 2009)

squarepeg, using a fan like that can sure drive down moisture content fast, you have to keep a close eye on it so it doesn't get too low, I did it like that once and let the fan run too long and ended up with honey that was like taffy. This past summer was so dry that all my honey came off the hives under 16%, in fact most of it was 14%-15%, definitely had to heat it to get it out of the combs, even then it was still thick. John


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