Trying out a new honey filter

Recently I was asked to try out a new honey filter developed by an Atlanta baker. He had heard beekeepers talking about problems with the filters they were using and decided to try his hand at making a better one.

There are many things I love about this filter. It's a 400 micron filter, but filters as well as my 200 micron filter in my filter bucket. The filter is like a paint filter and holds to the bucket with an elastic top.

I crushed and strained honey from about the equivalent of two frames and put the crushed comb in the filter:

I did one bucket of light and one of dark since the super we removed had both varieties in the combs. I cut around the dark honey and kept it separate from the light.

When the honey was bottled, it was clear and very clean.

I couldn't figure out how best to show you the clarity. I held it up to a window so you could see how clear it was. And I held it up to my kitchen tile.

This was a very small amount of honey so the filtered honey didn't occupy much of the bucket. In a good year (this wasn't), I would filter a whole medium of honey at once. The honey, when filtered, occupies about half of a five-gallon bucket. 

The major disadvantage of this filter is how low it hangs in the bucket. You can see the bottom of the filter in this shot through the honey gate. In a full super's worth of honey, this filter would be hanging in the filtered honey. I tried pulling the elastic band down as far as I could and this is as high as I could raise the bottom of the filter bag. 

For quality and ease of use, this is a great filter. It is reusable and washable. The seams are on the outside so there's nowhere in the inside of the filter for the wax to get caught. It is easy to clean. 

Its biggest disadvantage at the moment is the length of the bag. Stacked filters that I purchase from the big vendors only occupy about the top 1/4 of the five-gallon bucket and never do I have the problem of the filter being IN the honey which is what would happen with this one. The good news is that I have told the inventor about this and he will redesign it on the next manufacturing run.

Meanwhile, for small harvests, this is a great filter. You can buy it from Amazon. A photo of the product is in the fifth photo on this post and you can buy two of them for only $15.99.

I had a very pleasant visit with Michael Yoss, the maker of these filters. He and I harvested the honey together and he accompanied me while I filtered it. I appreciated his efforts to make a good product for beekeepers.