 | The selection of tools you will need;
- Blow torch and matches
- Large scrapper
- Small hammer
- Small pliers of some form
- Pincers
- Paint scrapper
- Hot air gun
- Special cleaning tool
|
 | With the large flat blade of the stripper it is easy to hack out the old comb, easily breaqking the foundation wires and quickly cleaning off most of the wax into the solar extractor.(Sorry, poor photo and I am working alone with the camera.) |
 | Using a blow torch you can quickly melt the loose wax on the frame, drying away any damp and steralising the bulk of the frame surfaces. |
 | Taking the frame inside the shed I can now prepare to clean the rest of the frame. I have some pieces of wood to stand the frame on and a jar into which to place any nails I remove. |
 | I find plastic end spacers very useful but when at the out apiary it can be irritating when they fall off whilst handling the frames. I get around this by using small tacks and nailing them onto the frames. However, the plastic can shatter when nailing or removing the pins. A quick warming with the heat gun softens the plastic and avoids this problem. |
 | You can then prize up the plastic, lifting the nail head clear and then use pincers or small pliers to pull the nail out and remove the end spacer. I then drop them into an old honey jar as they are easy to lose and I re-use them later. |
 | Turning the frame onto its back on the wooden blocks you can warm the joints holding the bottom bars in place to melt the wax and propolis holding them together. |
 | You may also need to prize out any pins holding the bottom bars in place but then, using a small hammer (jewelers hammer pictured) to kock the base bars out. |
 | The two bottom bars will usually be well stuck together with wax and propolis and will need to be warmed with the heat gun before you can prize them appart. Make sure you do this on a heat resistant surface. |
 | Once you have prized them appart you will need to warm and remove all the wax and propolis with a scrapper. I have always found this is where the wax moth larvae love to hide. |
 | Periodically you can clean the excess wax off the wooden blocks with the scrapper. |
 | Placing the original frame (less bottom bars) upside down on the wodden blocks you can now heat the strip of wood used to hold down the wax sheet on the top bar. This is usually nailed in place but after warming it is easy to prize away. |
 | Once these have been prized appart you will clearly see the remains of the original wax sheet. Also this is another place where the wax moth larvae love to hide. Check well into the corners of the frame. |
 | You can also warm the build up of propolis on the undersides of the frame lugs; this can be easily scrapped off. |
 | Turning the frame onto its end you can now clean off the side bars. The groove that carries the foundation is quite deep and needs to be cleared of all debris in order to ensure a new sheet will slide easily into the frame. Ensure that you check well into the corners as wax moth larvae love them. |
 | Because these grooves can be quite a problem you would really feel the benefit of a spcial tool. You can either buy one from Thorne (about £4.30) or go down the local DIY spend £0.99 on a length of mild steel 4mm rod. Bend it into shape, file the end to a balde around 3mm wide (thats the gap in the frame) and then quickly harden it by heating with a blow torch and plunging it into water. Sounds complicated but I made one in 10 minutes. |
 | With this simple tool you can clear the groove (once you have warmed it with the heat gun) in one single movement). |
 | You can now clean off the excess wax from the face as it seems to collect here quite a bit. |
 | Nail the strip of wood, used to retain the wax sheet in the top bar, back into place. |
 | You can now re-affix the bottom bars. You can either re-nail or use the natural adhesion of the wax by using it to "weld" the bars back into position. |
 | However, doing what we have talked about here is not the only way to clean frames. If you have a reasonable quantity to do it is well worth using a Burco boiler. It gives a far superior result as you can see by the comparison of two frames cleaned by the different methods. With the Burco boiler the frame is cleaned compleely within seconds and any larvae are killed instantly. To completed the cleaning all you need to do is open the top bar and remove any of the remaining wires. Some people recommend using soda crystals in the water but you should realise that this destroys the wax. Using plain water means you can reclaim the wax. The only downside - cleaning the Burco afterwards. If you have used Soda Crystals then disposal of the liquid needs to be carefully considered. Otherwise you just dump the water but again any hot wax suspended in the water can be a problem. That said - the result is brilliant. My only other thought is that manually cleaned frames retain the smell and coating of wax whilst the Burco cleaned frames are certainly "drier" and I wonder how much longer they would last?. |