New press for crushing wild honeycomb

| Beekeeping, Food, Natural Beekeeping | 32 comments | Author :

I am a little bit in love with our new honey press. It is made from stainless steel and it can crush close to a whole box of natural honeycomb in one fell squish. What better way to get all that goodness of the pollen, propolis and of course the honey into the jar?

Tim loads up our fandangled honey press as part of a natural beekeeping class

Crushing comb that has been through the brood (but which is now full of honey) and has lots of pollen in it (that’s the red stuff) – millions of flowers, concentrated into this one place…

And at the end of the pressing, we’re left with a big lump of beeswax
The final block of beeswax and comb bits which we can then render down to pure, organic, chemical free beeswax and use for all sorts of extremely useful things…

Tim Malfroy got this particular honey press overseas, but I’ve found a couple of models in Australia that look the same, though they’re sold as fruit presses.

Apparently these type of presses are used extensively in Africa for top bar beekeeping of various types. And you can also use them to press fruit. Multifunction!

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  • That looks amazing! Prior to moving to Serendipity Farm I had all sorts of gadgets like that littered about the house (in town) nonchalantly claiming how amazingly sustainable I could be if given a few acres of land. Now I have to put my money where my mouth is and these gadgets have to pay for themselves or get shelved. I think the pasta maker is heading for the thrift shop along with my centrifuge juicer…no time to use them and no inclination any more (too tired after all the hard work to bother with them). There is an old man who lives around the corner from us who has 70 squillion chickens of all different kinds and he just so happens to have about 100 hives out the front of his house sending out radar bees to Serendipity Farm on a regular basis. Rather than pay to learn how to keep bees (something that is now on MY radar), I figure I might do a bit of free labour for this man and learn for free and perhaps he might even let me buy one of his hives along with some bees for our property. If they don’t like it here (lord knows why they wouldn’t, everything else does!) they can just hop over the house at the back and go home! Cheers for your most interesting info about bees and how to get honey from them without forcing them into indentured slavetude (maybe my vegan daughter won’t put me into a bad nursing home now)

  • North Americans see here the how-=to! Reaping the riches of this wondrous land right before your very eyes!

  • I like the red honey! Any ideas as to what kind of plant the pollen is from? Around here (Central Missouri, USA) there is mostly red and white clover, which makes for a very clear, sweet honey. My dad was a beekeeper for most of the time we were kids, but I’ve never seen honey that bright red color.

    • Matthew Groves

      Central Missouri? or Minnesota.

  • Kirsten, you have to try making some lip mojo with that wax. Melt the wax and add about the same amount again of olive oil (or almond oil) mix, pour into little pots et voila, Jojo’s Lip Mojo! You will never have chapped lips again. You can also add lavender oil and/or vitamin E oil for extra goodness. I also use it as a barrier cream on my hands before gardening. It will be hard but you just scrape a bit off with the back of your finger nail and it melts onto your skin. Great as a gift too 😉
    Cheers
    Jo

  • Rauf

    What about the centrifugal method of honey extraction

    • Hey Rauf,

      The centrifugal method can only be used for extracting honey in conventional frame beekeeping where the frame and the comb is re-enforced with wires and pre-fab foundation etc, in order to allow the comb to be re-used in the hive once the honey is extracted by centrifuge.

      Warré beekeeping specifically does not re-use the comb in the hive after honey harvest, in order to prevent disease, toxin build up and also to allow the bees to build new comb according to the dictates of the next season (no two natural combs are ever the same).

      So therefore a honey harvest from a natural beekeeping hive involves harvesting the natural comb and pressing the honey out (or just eating it as comb), and then using the beeswax for something else (in our case, shiitake log production, salves etc)…

  • Thanks Kirsten – for either the kit jealousy or making me spend money, not yet sure which. Just today written on the joy of my Warren hive from Tim and can’t wait to see that delicious flow.

  • Steve W

    Mmmm … stainless steel gadgets … mmm! No seriously, looks good. Reckon it’s strong enough to do apples for cider making when not squishing honey comb from our as-yet-hypothetical-Warré-hived-bees?

    • We’ll report back in about a month during apple squishing season? Fingers crossed this press can handle apples…

  • Congratulations 😀
    I’ve taken an elective at university, ‘The Art of Honey-making’ and this blog post of yours reminded me so much of the lovely summer I spent collecting honey combs, learning about types of bees, swarming, etc… 🙂 I got bitten a few time, got to collect (& consume loads of) precious royal jelly… A fellow classmate even got a 100 just for accepting to undergo b aee shower!!! Oh, so many beautiful memories!! 🙂

    Hiba
    http://www.cloudoflace.com

  • The honey that was produced made my mouth water for sure. Would love to have one but then would have to find wild honey I wonder if I could work out a deal with one of the bee removal guys to get the honey from the hives when they relocate the bees….

  • 1043mabovethesea

    Fabulous! I need it. … as I munch on honey toast and drip it onto my keyboard. :/

  • zpblogaccount

    Wow, that’s the most amazing honey I’ve ever seen…

  • Would you please post link to that model of press? Another difference between pressing vs. centrifuging is that you don’t get some of the aeration that can occur when centrifuging which in turn keeps the honey more as it originally was in the honeycomb cell.

    • There’s two links to this kind of press in the post above – they’re sold as fruit presses, but used as honey presses, particularly in Africa..

  • MaryAnne

    What is the price?do you know of where in Africa I can find it?

  • Dez

    Constante Imports won’t respond to any of my emails. Brewmaster doesn’t sell the All-Stainless Steel press like this one. Can anyone tell me where I can buy the press used in this demonstration?

  • Compare to the centrifuge, it looks like your method makes much more difficult the cleaning of the wax for use like candles making etc. How do you clean the wax?

    • you render it out… it’s a simple process – just melt the wax and filter out the gunk…

  • David Trees

    Hi Kirsten,

    Do we know where Tim got his from. Was it here in Europe? I know Tim visited France at some point?

    Also, in case some one hasn’t heard about it… I heard that the scum left after the rendering, makes excellent mini fire starters for slow combustion heaters…
    I think it’s slum gum or something like that..?

    What method do you use to render the wax? Have you read the book by Phil Chandler called the Barefoot Beekeeper… He is a local here in the UK. Nice fellow. Smart beekeeper. His passion is Top Bar hives.

  • David Trees

    Sorry, one more question… Is this the juicer you used to get all those bottle of apple cider I think I saw on another post?

    • Nope we used a steam juicer for the apples this year, tho you *could* use this press for apples if you wanted to. If you were making cider, this would be better cause you’d get the yeasts from the apple skins interacting witht he brew…

  • Nicolas Neveux

    Thanks for the tip! This is my second year beekeeping. I’ve got a fruit press just like yours and never thought to use it for honey. I also use Warre type hives.

  • Nwoha Richard

    I’m a beekeeper from Nigeria and I would like to buy one those honey press. How do I go about it?

  • Neither of those links carry that model anymore… 🙁

  • Barry Eslick

    Hi Tim
    I’m very interested in the honey press would you please forward further information to me including a price please?
    Many thanks
    Barry

    • Kirsten Bradley

      Sorry Barry Tim doesn’t sell them