A mechanical cappings press extracts honey trapped in beeswax without heat, preserving raw honey's enzymes and flavor. Cappings hold up to 20% of their weight in honey. The dry wax left behind can be melted into candles, wraps, and cosmetics.
When you extract honey, the thin layer of wax cappings you remove holds a surprising amount of trapped honey. Rather than wasting it or heating it, we use a mechanical capping screw press to recover every last drop, whilst keeping that honey completely raw and natural. As we uncap the frames using our uncapping machine, all of the wax cappings fall into a clean uncapping tray, which is a hopper for the wax capping screw press. These trays collect both the wax and any honey that drips off the frames during the process. All of this honey and wax is fed down through the hopper into the Edison screw of the honey wax cappings press. These wax cappings can hold up to 20% of their weight in honey, and wasting honey like that does not make sense, so everybody has their own method of recovering it. By recovering it, we increase the overall yield from every single harvest and keep the process 100% natural with no additives or any heat whatsoever. The wax capping screw press is a mechanical device that gently compresses the wax through an Edison screw, forcing out every last drop of honey, and leaving you with raw honey and compressed wax cappings. So all of that honey and wax that's coming off the uncapped frames, but also coming directly from the frames in the uncapping machine, falls down into that hopper, and the bottom of the hopper has access into the Edison screw. The Edison screw moves the honey along through a tighter and tighter channel, forcing all of that honey out, and once it gets to the end, the dry wax is ejected, ready for cleaning and reuse. At that point, if you've set it up correctly, there is no honey left over in the wax cappings, and you can go ahead and process that to extract all of the wax. Because there's no heat involved in this process, the honey retains all of its natural enzymes, aromas, and flavors, making it identical in quality to the honey extracted from the frames and the extractor. For me, this is a brilliant process because what a lot of other beekeepers do is they take those wax cappings and they'll put it off into a Meliflow or a heated unit, bring the temperature up, and re-filter it to get the honey out. And that obviously introduces quite significant amount of heat and degrades the honey. The wax cappings press, although expensive, kind of pays for itself in the additional recovery of good quality honey, as opposed to the standard recovery of slightly lower quality honey. It also just works very well in the honey extraction room, particularly with the uncapping machine. I would not buy an uncapping machine like this unless I had the wax capping screw press to go underneath. Once the cappings have been pressed, the dry wax is set aside and then later melted down for other uses. We turn ours into candles and beeswax and wraps and furniture polish cosmetics, another great way to make the most of every part of the hive. So here are some tips for the best results using the wax cappings press. Keep your cappings clean and process them as soon as possible, dropping them directly into the hopper. Always work in a warm room around 25°C so the honey flows freely. Avoid heat wherever possible to keep the honey raw and natural. Label and store the recovered honey separately if required for traceability. Recovering honey from wax cappings is simple, efficient, and completely natural. It is a brilliant way to maximise your honey yield and make sure nothing goes to waste, while also giving you a very valuable byproduct in clean beeswax. If you are interested in learning a little bit more about these machines, you can head over to the Lyson or Abello website and check them out.
