removal of honey

Can you remove pollen from honey without a centrifuge

Yes.

Warm and fine filter?
PS I'm sure I read somewhere that you can use diatomaceous earth

REDWOOD said:

Can you remove pollen from honey without a centrifuge

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Why would you want to?

Erichalfbee said:

Warm and fine filter?
PS I'm sure I read somewhere that you can use diatomaceous earth

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Don't big commercial producers use fullers earth?

Marton said:

Why would you want to?

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To look at the pollen under a microscope

That makes absolute sense now!

Perhaps I should have said separate

Ah......You dilute the honey then let it stand and look for the pollen at the bottom.
I can't remember how much water you add....sorry but there was a thread on this here some time ago.
I posted there with an answer.......can't remember though....getting old

10gm honey. Add water to make 30 ml of solution .
Stir
Leave to settle for at least 20 hours
Decant leaving about 10 ml. Stir.
Leave to settle again.
Decant liquid. Dry sediment. Make slide
(Extract from study notes)
Bob Maurer suggests greater volumes of water and several settles and decants.
I found bob's method better as too much sugar remains if not enough liquid used to remove it.

drex said:

10gm honey. Add water to make 30 ml of solution .
Stir
Leave to settle for at least 20 hours
Decant leaving about 10 ml. Stir.
Leave to settle again.
Decant liquid. Dry sediment. Make slide
(Extract from study notes)
Bob Maurer suggests greater volumes of water and several settles and decants.
I found bob's method better as too much sugar remains if not enough liquid used to remove it.

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When I did the KSRC class where centrifuges were available, I was told that the sedimentation method (as above) barely/rarely worked.

For centrifuging, the 10g was diluted to 45ml, spun and decanted. Made up to 45ml again with warm water (to remove any crystals of any sugars), shaken very vigorously to disperse the pollen and dissolve any sugars, spun again and decanted to leave the pollen for the slide.
I don't see 20 hours settling being equivalent to that sort of spinning … something like 1000g for 10 minutes!

We can all separate pollen with our large centrifuges.....can't we?

Erichalfbee said:

We can all separate pollen with our large centrifuges.....can't we?

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Ha........ indeed we can, now where did I put my duck tape

REDWOOD said:

Ha........ indeed we can, now where did I put my duck tape

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Yeh ... Duck tape covers a variety of situations ....

I have decided to make my own centrifuge and need to buy the tubes for a pattern but did not realise there are so many types and sizes, what do you consider the size required.

Anyone got an answer please

To hold 50ml

Thank you

REDWOOD said:

I have decided to make my own centrifuge and need to buy the tubes for a pattern but did not realise there are so many types and sizes, what do you consider the size required.

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The centrifuges at KSRC that were used for honey used 45ml capacity tubes (as indicated above). However they had 4 "swing-out" cups, each of which held 4 sample tubes.

Importantly, each (plastic) sample tube rested on a rubber cylinder at the bottom of its recess in the cup.

There were other centrifuges at KSRC taking smaller tubes. These seemed to go into 45º holes in the one-piece rotor.



Because of the very high energy of the high speed rotation, any home-made centrifuge needs extremely strong shielding - to retain any flying 'bits' in the event of something breaking …


I wonder whether an old fashioned (washing) "spin dryer" might be the basis of a home made unit.
Since one is unlikely to be preparing a very large number of different honey samples, one could settle for a lower 'g' and longer spin time. If the motor is happy turning it, it wouldn't matter greatly if it had to run for an hour … or more …

How difficult would it be for a man of your talents to make something along these lines?
Then you need maybe a 20 or 40 ml plastic test tube with a pointy end.