An Exciting New Tool To Clean Plastic Foundation Frames So They Can Be Reused In Your Beehive

G I'm Chris a kiwi beem man I'm going to talk today about a problem that every beekeeper has and that is what to do with mangy old frames if you've got frames with plastic Foundation either plastic frames or wooden frames with plastic Foundation you can clean them and then rewax them and reuse them but it's a chore it really is you can scrape the wax off and then you can water blast the frame it's a dirty laborious process and quite honestly like a lot of other beekeepers up till now I've just been chucking them away and buying new ones in this video I'm going to show you a new product which is just going into production that will revolutionize this problem and let you reuse those plastic Foundation frames by cleaning them and making them as good as new so this is a wooden prototype I'm not going to show you the inside of it that's a trade secret but the idea of it is that it's run off a 4,000 PSI Water Blaster and it cleans one side of a plastic frame at a time and this is its first run since we've talked about it a lot we've been thinking about it working on it for probably 6 months on and off today is the first time that we've had all the bits in one place and we've assembled them and we're ready to stick some frames through and see if it works so we got some cudy old frames here every beekeeper's got these tucked away in their shed somewhere now these are plastic frames if you got a got a wood so we' got a wooden one there we're not sure how it's going to work on a um so that's plastic foundation with a wood wood around the outside we're not sure if the wood's going to be able to stand up to the process but there's only one way to find out let's try the wood one first we self-destruct it okay what this what we wanted to know is can you clean wooden frames without damaging the wood and the answer is other than that there uh it can be done we knew that was probably going to be an issue that the uh bottom of the frame would would get missed because when I built the box I put this bit a little bit higher than was originally planned but we can fix that by lifting the channel up so that it's at the right height okay so take two we've jury rigged the uh bottom channel to lift it up a little bit this is the thing with prototypes it's never going to work worked perfectly the first time trial and error that's what it's all about but just let's look at that frame that's what it was like that's what is like it's not too bad for one time over over it because this prototype is made out of wood if it runs with nothing in it and it's actually chewing away the wood in the background obviously the uh final model won't be like that [Music] maybe the others I think we might need need to be slightly further back there to get that full spread or they need to be a little bit another 5 m wider yes either either would do I think we're just just just missing uh but look all right so it's struggling to deal with that which is pollen old packed pollen Okay so back a step what we're trying to do in this uh test was to ex remove the wax and clean the frames all in one hit the prior plan was to whip the wax off with a multi-tool and then run them through the cleaner let's see how good it is doing that okay so these are old dirty frames that have been cleaned with a multi-tool and uh I'll insert a video of doing that just so you know what a multitool is and how quickly it [Music] happens what we're going to do now is see how effective this machine is at cleaning those frames okay now Steven poked the frame in there to start with because we're using a wooden mockup [Applause] okay that was the starter frame that he put on the way to stop the wood from being destroyed this is the one you're looking for this is what we're looking for beautiful clean frame ready to be rewaxed just a tiny little smudging of dirt in that corner I'd be more than happy to wax that and put it into one of my hives this is what it this is the before and this is the after what did that take to put that through there seconds seconds just seconds so it's a winner you might have noticed that I was holding the uh gun on the Water Blaster uh pay no attention to that this is a onean job the commercial model will have a valve on it at this end where you can St start your water blaster up up when you're ready to go turn the valve on it'll machine will start up when you want to stop it you just reach out and turn it off so no extra person standing around holding on to it the way I was okay so it looks like the Prototype Works in concept there's a bit of fine tuning to do but it's really to go into production I I've got to declare an interest here Steven does this for a living He makes machines and sells them around the world and so he's going to be going into commercial production with these and he has offered me a small Commission on the sales in return for my input into helping build the Prototype helping with the design a little bit and producing some videos to promote it I hope this is a tool that will be useful for you it solves a problem that every beekeeper has what do you do with your old frames hope you enjoyed the video thanks for watching don't forget to subscribe and I'll catch you on the next one

Channel: Kiwi Wildman (once known as A Kiwi Beeman)

Views: 2,797

Keywords: A Kiwibeeman, akiwibeeman, Frazer, Bee Keeping, Parakore Honey, Parakore Frame Cleaner, Stephen Beeby, Cleaning Old Honey Frames, re-using plastic foundation

Id: 6yKeWO2OPVY

Length: 7min 59sec (479 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 10 2024