A machine for uncapping honeycombs including a feeding mechanism for depositing honeycombs on a conveyor chain in sequential relation with the conveyor chain conveying the honeycomb through a buffing or cleaning station in which the honeycombs are cleaned, through a cutting station where the honeycombs are uncapped and then supporting the honeycombs in overlying relation to a drain tank.
Apparatus for feeding honey frames into a Cook & Beals automatic rotary cutter uncapping machine, the apparatus providing a pair of spaced horizontal conveyors from which are suspended honey frames to be fed into a Cook & Beals machine. The horizontal conveyors are arranged to feed the frames one by one onto spaced parallel vertical conveyors which carry the frames singly into the Cook & Beals machine. The apparatus provides a picker for pulling frames one by one from the horizontal to the vertical conveyors and a stop which acts to prevent frames on the horizontal conveyors from being transferred to the vertical conveyors except at the correct position of the vertical conveyors.
The wax lids of honeycomb cells are removed by a rotating tool which is provided as a rotating, cylindrical brush with firm, flexibly deflectable bristles. The honeycomb, from which the lids are to be removed, is arranged within a guide support of a casing, within which the honeycomb is movable relative to the resilient tool, under pressure. The rows of bristles of the rotating brush preferably extend at an angle to the longitudinal axis of the brush body and are uniformly distributed across the surface of the brush body. This type of device can be part of a system for fully automatically removing lids from honeycombs, providing for the automatic feeding and discharging of honeycombs.
An apparatus for removing frames from honey supers comprising a lift mechanism adapted to receive a plurality of stacked supers and to raise the same to enable the uppermost super to be pushed laterally therefrom by means of a horizontally extending push-off arm. The frames are pushed upwardly from the super removed from the stack and are conveyed laterally into a scraping area wherein the wax is scraped from the top and bottom bars of the frames. The scraped frames are then moved laterally on the machine towards an operator who manually removes the scraped frames from the apparatus and delivers the same to a decapping machine. The operation is continuous so that successive supers are moved through the machine with the frames being removed therefrom and scraped.
A method and apparatus for cleaning bee culture nests or hives of the spirally wound type, which are formed by spirally wound strips of corrugated and separator material. Bee larvae are removed and the nests cleaned by unwinding and separating the corrugated and separator strips, mechanically cleaning the strips and rewinding them to form a hive for reuse. The mechanical cleaning of the corrugated strip is accomplished by a plurality of fingers arranged to move through the flutes on each side thereof to remove the bee larvae. Scrapers contact both sides of the separator strip to remove the remaining adherent nesting material or "debris".
An apparatus and method for uncapping wax from both sides of a honeycomb. The apparatus comprises a pair of rotatable flails, a first conveyor for delivering a honeycomb to the pair of rotatable flails and a second endless conveyor for moving the honeycomb from the pair of rotatable flails. The pair of rotatable flails is located in a gap defined between the first and second endless conveyors.
