A beekeeper demonstrates uncapping honey frames with an Abello steam knife, explaining how the mesh tray separates wax from honey while it drains into a bucket. The brief steam exposure doesn't damage honey quality or raise HMF levels, and the tool works fast and clean with proper frame spacing.
If you wanna get your honey from the frame into the jar, the first thing you need to do is remove the wax capping. You can cut it off with a knife, you can press everything out. In today's video, I'm gonna show you how to remove that wax capping using the Abello steam knife. So this is the setup that I've got here, a wallpaper strimmer generating steam. I've touched it once, I burnt myself already. It comes through, ow! It comes through these black tubes and heats up this uncapping knife up here. I just tried to adjust it, it is absolutely roasting hot. Ow! And then the steam comes back out and it goes into this bucket down there. There is another version of this which is a closed-loop system, so the steam gets recirculated back through to the knife and you don't get the steam coming out of the bucket like this. This one here is an open-loop system. And all you do is you just keep the steam generator topped up with water and then you just empty the bucket as and when you need. So the idea here, really simple. I'm not gonna burn myself again, but you've just got a knob there. You put water in this knob, you tighten it all up. You can see it coming out now. Goes along that tube. Don't touch the tubes when it's hot, it is very, very hot. Comes along here into a fully adjustable stainless steel knife. It's relatively sharp, it's not mega sharp, but it is incredibly hot. And then you can see that tube there goes all the way back round and kind of discharges any of that steam down there into that bucket. Dead simple system. Now the metal knife mounts onto this box here, really, really simple mount. And then the cage like that, fully stainless welded cage, that can come off. And then inside here you have a woven mesh that's gonna catch all of those wax cappings. And then down at the bottom you have another stainless tray just to kind of give support to that mesh there. The idea being that it catches all of the wax cappings and all of the honey can come through into a food-grade bucket like that, and then you can reclaim all of that honey. So a really, really nice simple system. I've used the steam knives before from Abello and they are very, very effective. And in today's video, I'm gonna show you with the frames that I've got up there just how quick and how easy this is. And what's nice is that it frees up one of your hands so you're not kind of like sawing down with the knife like that, but you can use both hands to push the frames through the steam knife. If you do get this, I would go for the closed loop option. It's a little bit more expensive, but it stops all of that steam going up into the air. But both versions will give you an incredibly hot knife. Now, the first question that people are gonna ask here is, is that gonna ruin the honey? Is it gonna increase the HMF levels? Is it gonna kill all the enzymes? No, all it's gonna do is very quickly just take all of that wax off, and then you look at the honey or you touch the honey afterwards and it is just back to room temperature. So no issues with that whatsoever. So let's jump straight in and start uncapping some frames. Now, whenever you're doing any sort of uncapping, you need to make sure that the frame spacing was correct so that the wax cappings protrude beyond the edge of the frame. Otherwise, all of these devices don't work very well. I've chosen the Best Frames that I possibly got, but obviously I've extracted all of my honey supers at the moment. These are just some brood frames that I've got, and this is all for my own consumption, so I'm not going to be selling any of this whatsoever. So you can see the frame that I've got there slightly protruding over the edges. Take a look around my kitchen as well at the same time. Pretty much the same on both sides, not fully capped over, but that shouldn't be an issue using this knife. Let's jump straight in and give it a go. So you can see just how easy that is. Wow. So just taking a tiny little bit of that wax off there, and you can see already it's starting to uncap very, very nicely. So check that out, that is some serious clean uncapping. I have to say, I'm very, very happy with that. Really, really nice and quick. Just takes a little bit of getting used to kind of where to put your hands and stuff. There we go, fully uncapped on both sides there. The tiny little bit where it's been missed out, that's where it's below the line of the frame. And obviously if you're doing that with supers and you've got your castellations in, that will never happen. You can see just how quick that was to actually get the wax cappings off there. Really, really happy with that. So there we go, simple as that. You can see just how well that's taken off all of those wax cappings on both sides there. Make sure that the wax cappings come beyond the frame, this is a really nice simple tool to get all of those wax cappings off and to kind of try and minimize that mess. All of the wax cappings go down into that mesh, the honey draws through, you've got your frames ready to be fully extracted. This is a really, really nice neat solution.
