Honey Harvest and Review of the HillCo UltraMax

think it's not humid around here look at those windows not that they're quality windows look at the doorknob in the lock and it's like 76 degrees in there but we're holding steady at 40 humidity inside here [Music] well hey there folks it's barry's best honey i'm mike and i do bees welcome back to southeast louisiana and to my little shop here well i'm going to extract some honey it is that time we got the honey supers in there's 17 full ones in a partial deep which makes about 18 left a bunch out there just going to have to do an increment and that's what we're going to do today we are going to get a shot at trying out this hillco ultramax is that the right one i can't remember the models it's the 18 frame y'all saw it in my video i'm excited to use it we're going to check this thing out see how it does with honey we're going to see how it does without being fastened to the floor and we'll get all these extracted and go get more off so let's get started let's see what we can figure out with this cove let me get my honey house set up i gotta get my tank set up i do like my maxim tank i love this thing this has been a really nice addition a couple years ago it rolls around i'm gonna get this thing rigged up i just rinsed it and washed it still a little wax residue but but i like it because i can load up frames and then while i'm spinning i can keep loading more and we can keep going gotta rig it up and have it ready to go i like it right here in this spot because now when i lay my frame up here i can lean it forward it all falls down in here boom drains this tank when you stack those frames there and those cappings i'm telling you you can if you let it sit for a couple days you will get five to ten gallons stacked up in this tank before you know it this thing will make a bucket easy i'll show you how i do my capping drains and what i do because i don't have a wax separator i'd love to have one but that the cost doesn't justify what i'll get out of it for me and my operation so i've learned to really manage this wax cappings tank effectively enough to get a lot of honey out of it so i got my extractor and one thing i thought about was wow i've got these strainers that tend to be a choke point and that's these double ones y'all seen them but i said you know what that choke point could hurt me now that i got 18 frames it's a choke point on a six frame all of a sudden i got the gears turning and it takes my gears a little while to get going but they got going finally and i thought hmm there could be a lot of honey coming out of that thing this thing is going to have to be watched carefully so i asked my buddy kenny kenny he's got a 20 frame uh accent what buddy kenny does he's got about 15 or so of these 600 microns and he just keeps rotating buckets in and out i thought that's good so i'll get a couple extra i already had one one or two i said i'll get a couple eggs for those and that afternoon john hill from hillco bees came out with a video so he showed this tank and we'll be in that day i was i mean i was literally just thinking about that i was like wow perfect timing i look at this tank i'm thinking this would be cool it's got these strainers it's got a fine one of course one and you dump your honey in this side it's got a gate valve that spins right in here it's a five gallon bucket basically made of stainless steel and it's strains for you i don't know how it's gonna work i'm gonna see how it works but i know this i can dump a quick five gallons and set it to the side let everything kind of settle let stuff float to the top and i can pour it right out i don't have to drain it all the way down i'm thinking i can drain it about here and throw another batch in there at the same time rotating out my strainers we're gonna see how it works i like it what it looks like let's see what it does it's like i love to look at that extractor but we ran it yet inside note though everybody i've talked to that has ran it has had good success let's see what barry's best honey has because i always do things different and i just mess things up a lot of times so we'll see all right folks i'm uncapping already i i don't turn the camera on when i first start uncapping i couldn't get into a rhythm you know how it is guys when you haven't done a while so i had to get my rhythm going uh first thing you're gonna see is i use a cold knife which i've shown you this before i have tried a hot knife actually i have tried the pierce it was not for me and not saying anything about pierce it works for so many people it's working for a lot of years the original manufacturer of the hot knife it just didn't work for me i'm so used to the cold knife i'm pretty quick with it i can't even use one of those cold knives that's offset with the handle and like the hot knife i can't even use a cold knife that's offset like that i got to use my little red knife it just works for me it's you know you find what works for you and you get in that rhythm and you can do it so yeah the pierce didn't work for me um it's a beautiful knife beautiful handmade knife but it just wasn't for me so i've already started a capping as you can see and i'm going to go ahead and run it i'm going to get an 18 in here that's two boxes and i'll talk a little about how i uncap what i'm doing and how i get that to drain better because i want to talk about fat frames you know how i call them p-h-a-t somebody told me i was too old to say that p-h-a-t fat frames uh nine frame boxes majority of everything i run is 9 frames and when it comes done capping there's so much easier and those boxes you can feel significant weight difference when you pick a 9 frame up versus a 10 frame so i do believe there's more honey i'll show you what's going on with this uncapping tank in a minute let's get some stuff in the extractor i'm going to finish uncapping uh three more and then we'll get them loaded and see what happens so this one's kind of thin actually this one didn't build way out you tell it's cold the way the cappings are breaking up that's all right gives me confidence that it's at least drier plus there's still some early spring honey left because remember we didn't extract a lot of that and you can tell the difference i'll hit one that you can tell is all tallow and this thing even when it's cold will glide right through i hit those thick ones and i can tell that's early spring honey nine frame box as well i tell you i started on those the third year i was beekeeping and i haven't turned back my voice is really squeaking um but i haven't turned back off of them because they really do a nice job and one of the main reasons is really for uncapping it's just it's easier to uncap and so see that big old slab coming off i got a question the other day from a buddy who watches our channel he'll probably be commenting on here and he was asking about not cutting it right directly to the frame well you can do that it just takes a lot more time um there's nothing wrong with doing it anybody can do this easy here's one for example so we look at this one and it's it's way away from the frame any time by just cutting the caps you can absolutely do that it's kind of disheartening sometimes to see it all go in there but this tank drains better than you would think so yeah i could come out i could come out off of it but see now i've got to work it it's a little slower i gotta take my time and i've only got 17 full supers anyway but that takes a lot of time to really get it you know can you see me to get it just the caps off and i did that a little bit when i first started with knife frames but then i realized just cut it the bees are going to build it out i'm still saving plenty of comb for them to draw on and there's a lot more there but they can draw on that this is easy right here so it really it's mainly for an uncapping deal it just makes it easy to run down the frame because now i take this one instead of doing that a little piece of propolis i can just take it right down the frame with my guide and i can go much faster when i don't slip off like that another thing that i noticed too you got to be careful with if you're going to uncap just the top caps you got to do them all like that online frames because what i found will happen is now you'll throw your extractor out of balance because you'd be surprised that little slab that you save that's a lot of honey left in that frame and you put that with a bunch of say thinner ones you already got a problem with frames not being the same well then when you're on purpose make them not the same it could be a problem so i found if i'm gonna do one i gotta do them all like that well that's gonna take too long so that's kind of why i don't do it but by all means you can cut just the caps off you'll get more honey through your extractor but i'll show you in a little while what i do with this and this strains good i used to sweat it going oh my gosh that's a lot of honey but then what i realized was really i get the majority out of the wax so it's not a big deal let's load this extractor i'm excited about this the moment of truth first thing i want to check on this hillco is how easy is it to load now that was easy and you may say what are you talking about mike how hard is it the loading extractor you'd be surprised uh make sure i'm loading it right here yeah that goes there yeah okay um sometimes like my my maxim you've got to turn it first of all with the motor now the new maxim doesn't do that they've changed the motors but it's got a real tight clearance to get the frames in so and look i know that uh over mr edge we load his 48 frame it's it's a little tricky sometimes uh getting them all to set right just 18 frames so far on this nylon gotta get used to scooching the bottom of the frame back it looks like but it it loads easy all right last frame in that's it guys i think i got it all right we're gonna open honeygate i always have that open and see what it does starts up smooth seems happy we're gonna go slow and start getting it out that's the problem another thing with cool honey when i don't have it nice and warm what i like to do when mine's out of balance when it's warm is go real slow and a lot of honey i actually just start kind of coming out and then you can speed it up a little faster it may take a while with this just to make sure my balance is right i'm speeding it up now she's got a little wobble to her okay we'll just leave it i like to get it right to where the wobble is still manageable but on the edge of chaos and then stop and let it i see honey coming out so we'll well that thing is quiet wow that is quiet it's wobbling but what we're gonna do is let it sling some honey out and get some of that unbalance out of there and then we'll go all right so it's wobbling but it's it's happy all right we got honey dripping we got honey dripping look at that look at that yeah that's some thick stuff listen to it all right it's not bolted down i'm pushing it guys i'm pushing it you can tell that honey stick there it goes there it goes how excited do i sound wow it just got super quiet once that load comes off of it [Applause] how smooth it is now that we've gotten the initial frames everything's kind of out maybe the thicker frames is longer look it's not moving a bit and i'm gonna leave it at that speed because i don't know if i can keep up with the honey that's all right i'm gonna get that bucket contraption here in a second she's full let's shut that hurry up though i don't wanna [Applause] all right we're good so definitely a bottleneck on that this five gallon deal is going to come in handy because while um i should be knifing out some more frames but i'm not because i'm playing with my new extractor and i'm doing a review this is official all right we're sped up now [Applause] we're not at full speed but hello homes got a little noise once you get up to this speed in the gearbox nothing major though you can hear yourself think i could play music if i wasn't doing a youtube video you know copyright now so far look what i've got in here now once this reaches about an inch above that uh gate valve that'll be five gallons don't look like it i know but trust me it is um and yeah those are some fat cones coming off i agree but i'll pulverize these in a little bit with my knife as it gets high i'll stop polarizing it and after a couple days you have you'll be blown away at how much will actually drain out of that wax the first all the way up to about an inch will be all pretty dry like this could be honey in it but it won't be so sticky you can't touch it but it'd be pretty dry and fluffy so far so good guys here's a box of brand new frames drawn out this year got a number two on them for 2022. there's your 10 frame see how they don't cut as well of course the this is the outside frame so it's got a little fat on the outside see i just like to run it right down that board like that to me that's just makes it easy scratch the rest off i like to get all this wax out as much as i can so [Music] the question on everybody's mind might be would it leave in the back it did leave some honey in the back how much did it leave not a lot it's a small film i'd say maybe an eighth of an inch at the most uh might be to do with the fact that my honey is so thick because it's still dripping still coming out yep and our drain down there is draining just fine so it's drained very very well uh there is some honey left not a lot not as much uh as i've seen again not to compare apples and oranges but the conical design of my old one is is got it leaves about an inch and a half of honey uh without tipping it so this is pretty good i'm very excited about this i think it's mainly because it's thick right now it is some thick honey being in this cold room this tank it is pretty cool i like it it is a bottling it's considered a bottling tank uh you know a cold bottling tank so it does take a while to get through the screens just like these do yes i like this because this is a quick oh my goodness my extractor is filling up too fast oops it comes you see what i'm seeing is mostly air bubbles but there might be a particulate here and there coming through there but that's pretty clear a lot of air it'll hold five gallons so when i'm in a jam i'm going to stick it up under that thing every time so far this thing is fabulous let's run another run through it and see what happens i let this thing run just to let it run a while ago i let it run for 20 25 minutes empty frames from full always empty and just let it run there was hardly anything dripping out this motor stayed ice cold so yes that is it is a fact didn't break a sweat all right doing good guys i'm happy i'm happy so one other thing i do want to show i said i'd show i take these cabins and i chop them up like this one thing it does it flattens them out against the screen and it also chops it up where all this honey gets loose watch it'll be a puddle of honey on this when i'm done you can already see where some of it from early on is drained out the watch will drain this some of it's dry like down in here it's already dry because it drains through i'll take this thing and chop it all up like this i know there was a bunch of fat cones cut through here and you know you go oh wow look at all that's going it's all going to drain out well i should say i i bet 95 drains out of this wax it's amazing how it comes out of swag so i take my knife and i pulverize it we've already got close to five gallons in here that's probably about three gallons another half inch on the tank and we'll have uh we'll have five gallons so when you decide to drain your uncapping tank into your strainer like i did don't forget when you go back to uncapping to go check your valves because it can make a mess so we've had a little mishap we got to clean up there's a pound of honey wasted profits on the floor i want you to hear this when it's fully loaded how quiet it is real much wobble i mean it's quiet that it's quiet once that wobble comes out i can speed it right on up um so i didn't have to bolt the legs down i'm happy about that it's performing well it's performing well yeah nice unit guys really nice unit uh one note of interest on this is this gate it's it's a good gate i was wondering about i had never seen one like this works really well seals off really well but um i was wondering how i like it i like it pretty well it's just different i hadn't hadn't seen one like that before it's a lot of honey in that wax it's like a big slurry so when i make it a slurry i let this sit a couple days but it'll dry right out and this tank will be full all right so i have three deeps and three mediums left and i put them in the center of each carousel let me stop it and show you what i did so each each section holds six so i put deep medium on each side as far as the three deeps weigh about the same as each other and the three mediums do so let's see how well it balances i started it slow this thing has run really good as far as it's been real easy to balance and it's not bolted down it's running like there's nothing in there a little wobbling that's it and i'm about i'm not quite halfway no i'm halfway up with the speed i'm at my number five and it goes to ten so that thing is balanced really well see them halfway once it once it gets some of it out i'll spin it all the way up and we'll clean them out all right here's the final product you can see it's just full of honey all this wax it's all pulverized and chopped up i'm gonna drain this tank out and we'll drain it all the way out then we'll let this drain for about two days and i'll come back and show you what it does by just letting it drain just like this you think it's not going to drain but it will now i have to come chop it up a little bit because there's a lot in here but i'll come in in a day and chop it all up and then we'll let it drain some more smells like honey in here so let's take a look in the capping tank i hadn't looked at it yet i want to show you what i'm talking about uh yesterday about how this um wax will drain out so well it's probably it's a lot of wax may not all be done today it usually takes two or so days but let's look and see what's coming to the tank i emptied this tank down to about that much across the gate valve like there was only about that much above the gate valve oh sorry and then we had to stop but i'm going to show you what we got come across look at that wow so let's look it's at least a bucket at least a bucket um you can't even see the valve anymore just barely the top of it so it's about that much above the top of the uh honey gate that tank is pretty much full we had drained it down to where there was just a strip of small strip of honey you see how this wax it was a big puddle we dig through it it's still pretty wet but what i'll do see how that's off as we're going down going down i hadn't hit honey yet okay starting to get a little wet now so there's still more to drain see now it's starting to get wet and i'm five inches down in there so something like that so we're gonna do i'm gonna stir it up again see this out here is almost dry we'll stir it all up that's what i usually do and leave it for another day let's review what what we what we saw with this extractor first and foremost the honey harbor shielded just over 700 pounds we got 300 pounds from the early spring so we're right at around a thousand pounds of honey right now and our the goal is usually around 12 to 1500 last year we pulled 1 1800 pounds so to meet last year's we can we just need about 800 more pounds um there's still plenty of supers out there so i think we'll get it we'll get it no problem which i don't really need 1800 1500 would be a good ideal number maybe just about perfect so how did the extractor do well it did fine you all saw it i showed you every step of the way um things i love about it quiet smooth smooth and quiet balance to a t when you run it empty it's balanced perfect when you run it with frames it's so easy to balance because it's already so true i think this thing did not have to be bolted down it didn't have to be in my case so that was that was a plus for sure smooth and still a quiet we started at one point my wife was working on some supers over there she was on the other side of the supers and uh ended up i told her i said hey i'm already spinning and she didn't even realize that it was running now it's a little noisier when it's empty but when it's full and it starts off that thing is quiet so yeah that was neat um this gate valve this honey gate it's a little different a little different to use i love that it's stainless steel but you can see i got a drop out of it i didn't tighten it all the way down that probably would have helped the motor cool stayed cool the whole time ran this thing for a long time this gearbox got slightly warm this little electronics panel didn't get warm at all ran really well no problems loading it low's really easy um this nylon i didn't notice any kind of difference draining wise there is some honey in the very very back but but folks it is about that much literally a spatula one time around would pull it out if you really want it it is really literally about maybe an eighth of an inch so you can look in the back there's a slight film of it back there like i say about an eighth of an inch to a sixteenth and as it comes around it gets a little thicker now it's a big pool of it here it all drained to the front it probably would have drained faster if i didn't have such cool honey i don't know if y'all can see that with the light i'm trying to show it to you but it all drained to the front as advertised uh wonderful easy to run simple to use it stays steady so let's talk about a couple things that they aren't show stoppers at all and by no means would it sway me to say i wouldn't have bought this again but a couple things i can say about this is these bolts right here for the lid they can get you you got to be careful with these they can really get you sticking out a lot um they are they do have teflon lock nuts on them so maybe a shorter a shorter bolt to where you can just barely have a little bit sticking out those can get your fingers pretty good another thing is everything goes radial deeps and mediums all go radial and the only thing i saw that when you do put the deeps in it they're they can be i actually only did them from here they hit right here they don't hit hard they just rub right here they're pretty tight going in but they fit fine and they just drop right down nothing that slows you down really other than that this thing was a champ it was a pleasure to use it worked flawlessly it made no crazy noises it did nothing crazy everything functioned as it needed to so that is it that's that's there's your review for me from what i found with it um you know i did only have one to compare to but i didn't want to make this a comparison because they're two different extractors i like my little accent but i outgrew it as far as a honey harvest we are not done again i have plenty of supers out there still i'm gonna try and do it in two more separate harvests the harvest is bountiful i praise the lord for that it's a great harvest um the tallow look we had no privet the blackberry came in heavy that's 300 pounds of that stuff the towel started slow but it picked up strong while i was on vacation so very grateful for all of that and um very happy that we were able to at least start getting it off the hives and in here and in the buckets so that's probably going to wrap it all up folks i mean i think we got her done and we're gonna get her done the next few weeks if you guys like this video please don't forget to give it a thumbs up if you don't mind of course i really really appreciate all you guys support as i always say it's barry's best honey i'm mike and i do bees y'all have a wonderful wonderful evening and may god bless you we'll see y'all later you

Channel: Mike Barry

Views: 24,011

Keywords: beekeeping, bee hives, queen bee, queen, swarm, comb, honeycomb, brood, honeybees, honey, hive stand, bee suit, veil, hive, hives, hive tool, smoker, pheromone, hive beetle, varroa, mite

Id: hMpkai7HPC8

Length: 29min 26sec (1766 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 12 2022