I'm considering the purchase of a new cappings melter.  My current melter
heats the honey to "melter honey" (darkened and caramelized), and the unit
has sprung a leak somewhere.  I am wondering if an attempted fix will be
throwing good money after bad.  The caramelized honey has a limited market
and the collected wax still has honey mixed in and requires further
handling.

I am looking at the Dadant mini-melter ( http://tinyurl.com/mcqagdn ).  In
the catalog it looks like it will heat honey and wax separately so the
honey won't be overheated (marketable) and the wax ends up honey free.  But
there may be some "gotchas".  First off, it is designed for hand
uncapping.  I have a Cowen silver queen and will be loading the melter from
full uncapping baskets.  It looks like loading the melter will be awkward
at best.  So the unit may be too mini for my operation.  Dadant's next
offering ( http://tinyurl.com/qynvt75 ) is for commercial production,
overkill for the size of my operation, and cost prohibitive.

Kelleybees.com offers a "mini-melter" ( http://tinyurl.com/n34act9 ) that
looks like it might be a better fit, but not having seen the unit I am not
sure of the design.  It has a water-jacketed chamber with an overhead hood
with separate heating elements.  It looks like the operator raises the
hood, loads the cappings into the water-jacketed chamber, and closes the
hood.  Honey is gently heated by the water jacket, and the cappings are
"more aggressively" heated from the heating elements in the hood (similar
to an oven broiler).  I imagine the honey is not heated excessively and
darkened/damaged.

Annually I end up with a 5-gallon bucket, perhaps a bucket and a half of
melter honey (hard to market, usually "throw away") and perhaps 25-40 lbs
of wax.  What I am looking for in a melter is a unit that:

   - does not caramelize the honey the honey
   - does not mix honey with water (Maxant's model is out)
   - Does a good job separating wax and honey
   - A good fit for a 150-250 hive operation
   - Affordable

Comments/Recommendations requested, preferable from those with first hand
experience.  Thanks in advance!

Aaron Morris - I think, therefore I bee!

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