Extraction Honesty

[Rob Stockley 3,417]

9 minutes ago, cBank said:

Possibly a silly question, but what’s conversion between volume and weight? A google suggests about 1.45kgs per litre, but my scales are way too imprecise to get decent measure. I assume it varies depending on water content and honey type?

You may need to consider pressure and temperature aswell.

[yesbut 6,232]

51 minutes ago, Rob Stockley said:

ou may need to consider pressure and temperature aswell.

Definitely, Mt Everest vs Dead Sea

[cBank 801]

Someone’s going to say ‘salination’ next aren’t they?

[Rob Stockley 3,417]

9 hours ago, yesbut said:

Definitely, Mt Everest vs Dead Sea

Don't forget to face North and keep your mouth closed.

[John T 111]

Slightly off topic, but given the price of wax, do the extractors keep the wax or is it returned to you? (in some form or other).

Edited December 23, 2017 by John T

[M4tt 4,941]

10 minutes ago, John T said:

Slightly off topic, but given the price of wax, do the extractors keep the wax or is it returned to you? (in some form or other).

My extraction guy returns it to me in blocks 

[tristan 4,362]

1 hour ago, John T said:

Slightly off topic, but given the price of wax, do the extractors keep the wax or is it returned to you? (in some form or other).

depends on what deal you do with them.

you can get your wax back, or everyones thrown together then its divided up at the end, or they pay you for it.

keep in mind different extraction setups can have big differences in wax volumes.

[Kiwifruiter 605]

The guys i use dont pay or give back. It sucks.

[frazzledfozzle 7,484]

5 minutes ago, Kiwifruiter said:

The guys i use dont pay or give back. It sucks.

 

At $16-$18 a kilo that’s a lot of money to leave on the table.

[tristan 4,362]

41 minutes ago, Kiwifruiter said:

The guys i use dont pay or give back. It sucks.

i hope they take it off the extraction price ! ! 

[Trevor Gillbanks 6,847]

@Philbee  @Kiwi Bee

Deleted mis quote for you.

 

[deejaycee 2,457]

4 hours ago, Kiwifruiter said:

The guys i use dont pay or give back. It sucks.

 

Do you not go through Arataki?  If so, you are being paid for it, but at the honey price.

[Kiwifruiter 605]

18 minutes ago, deejaycee said:

 

Do you not go through Arataki?  If so, you are being paid for it, but at the honey price.

This is true but when wax is worth twice honey....

[Kiwifruiter 605]

And note i was very carefully not saying who i used....

[john berry 5,636]

One of the biggest problems extracting for other people is loss. Pallets of honey are weighed when they come in and some of them have more bees than honey. Loss one= the bees fly away. Wax. Up till very recently wax was worth less than honey and for manuka it's still worth a lot less, on top of that no matter how good your system is for removing honey from wax you always lose some honey. Try it sometime, scrape some cappings and then squeeze them absolutely dry in a piece of muslin. I'll guarantee it will be well over 50% honey. Then comes dross. This is made up of bits of black comb, dead bees, broken frames et cetera. On top of all that wax takes a lot of time and a lot of expensive energy to process. I don't do my own extraction but I am very familiar with the process and would be amazed if contract extractors made money on wax.

I'm pretty good at estimating honey weights when taking off boxes of honey and at the end of the season my estimated weights are normally within half a kilogram of actual yields. 28 kg per box is the heaviest average I've ever extracted but your hives are losing honey well before that point is reached. I prefer to take off honey at the 22\23 kg point.

[tristan 4,362]

1 hour ago, john berry said:

Pallets of honey are weighed when they come in and some of them have more bees than honey. Loss one= the bees fly away.

good point if your weighing boxes out in the field.

but no reason you couldn't weigh the boxes after the bees have come out.

 

the other factor is crystalline honey. a lot can come out of the frames but ends up caught in the filter system and ends up going to waste.

[john berry 5,636]

At Arataki the boxes are weighed in front of the beekeeper as they are brought in. It keeps it all honest and mostly there aren't too many bees but there is the odd load that you can't see for bees.

[jamesc 4,924]

We've done a bit of contract work for people.  There's a huge element of trust in the whole procedure, but generally people seem to expect to get more than they do.

We do the boxes in batches and fill the drums and that's it. You get whats in your drums. The wax is an  issue as it's a lot of work to start with a clean spinner to return the correct amount of wax to the owner.  There's a formula for working it out ..... a percentage of honey /wax , and as we get into the swing of it I'll have to dig it out of the memory banks.

The best way to ensure customer satisfaction is to get them to help out .... evenif it's just providing the smoko.

[Philbee 4,675]

Halfway through a batch a few years ago I counted the drums, did some numbers and things didn't add up.
I questioned the operator and was assured all was good
I questioned the numbers again and what do you know, a drum was found out the back of the yard with my name on it.
That was just the one I got back, more made it out the gate.

 

[WJFunnell 14]

Lots of variables here chaps. tempeture, heating time, number of empty frames in each super, number of bees, brood, pollen in each super. You would be surprised what I see in some  BF's box's   We seem to average about 20 box's per 300 Kg of honey. Last year it was  was closer to 25 supers per drum on occasions. If you are unsure feel free to be present, kitted in  MPI compliant hygiene equipment while we extract your supers.

[Philbee 4,675]

This particular incident I describe led to a 90 box test run by the management of the company
We weighed 90 full boxes that I supplied at just under 34kg average and weighed the wets out at less than 11kg and decided that the net was probably approx  22kg/box
These were all made up boxes as opposed to boxes straight off the hives.

 

Edited December 27, 2017 by Philbee

[WJFunnell 14]

I seldom see that happening when the flow is on. it is not unusual to get at least one box of empty frames for each pallet of supers (24)

[Philbee 4,675]

17 minutes ago, WJFunnell said:

I seldom see that happening when the flow is on. it is not unusual to get at least one box of empty frames for each pallet of supers (24)

Yes I can understand that.

I dont like paying for or transporting boxes that aren't full to the brim
Also I leave anything that isnt 80% capped for the Bees so they need to come out.
This is why my boxes can weigh 37kg in fact the reason the test batch averaged only 34 kg was it was the mop up round and I was a bit over it all by then
There are all sorts of problems on site with this approach such as robbing but my sites tend to be small and Im very careful to only have one  box open at a time which does require a lot of gear such as spare mats and lids.
 

Edited December 27, 2017 by Philbee

[fieldbee 255]

On 12/27/2017 at 7:55 AM, john berry said:

One of the biggest problems extracting for other people is loss. Pallets of honey are weighed when they come in and some of them have more bees than honey. Loss one= the bees fly away. Wax. Up till very recently wax was worth less than honey and for manuka it's still worth a lot less, on top of that no matter how good your system is for removing honey from wax you always lose some honey. Try it sometime, scrape some cappings and then squeeze them absolutely dry in a piece of muslin. I'll guarantee it will be well over 50% honey. Then comes dross. This is made up of bits of black comb, dead bees, broken frames et cetera. On top of all that wax takes a lot of time and a lot of expensive energy to process. I don't do my own extraction but I am very familiar with the process and would be amazed if contract extractors made money on wax.

I'm pretty good at estimating honey weights when taking off boxes of honey and at the end of the season my estimated weights are normally within half a kilogram of actual yields. 28 kg per box is the heaviest average I've ever extracted but your hives are losing honey well before that point is reached. I prefer to take off honey at the 22\23 kg point.

Thank you @john berry i was getting very frustrated with some of the moaning/comments above.  Then along comes your comment and I think okay someone who extracts their own honey is speaking up. But no you say you dont do your own extraction, Your comments are to the point and very balanced, people please take note.  I had one beek shocked that I wouldnt melt his wax down that another extractor had given him back.  Told him it wasnt worth my time and he wouldnt want to pay what I would charge.  I have just extracted 50 boxes for a newbie and said no I wouldnt melt his wax for him and I keep it.  Then told him he could have it back if he brought a container and he could do it himself with the sun.  He wasnt interested said he wasnt set up to do that.  He was cheerful and honest so gave him a small block 4 kg.

[tommy dave 1,184]

18 hours ago, fieldbee said:

@john berry  I have just extracted 50 boxes for a newbie and said no I wouldnt melt his wax for him and I keep it. 

what sort of arrangement do you normally run in this situation if you're buying the honey from the beek?

pay a $ amount to them for each kg of honey extracted, less a $ charge per frame extracted?

Edited December 30, 2017 by tommy dave