If you dabble in beekeeping, you most likely already own something similar to the REAMTOP Professional Beekeeper Suit for protection when harvesting your own honey. You already know that having a good suit is essential for this profession, but having a de-capper like the Black Menba Honey Extractor Uncapping Needle Roller, that keeps the honeycomb intact, is just as crucial in maintaining your hive.
Traditionally, beekeepers have sought to use a hot knife to cut off the beeswax capping in order to get to the honey, but this leaves the honeycomb structure badly damaged, meaning the bees have to start from scratch every time you harvest. The Black Menba Honey Extractor Uncapping Needle Roller does a fantastic job at uncapping the comb while the leaving the foundational structure intact.
If you are thinking of dabbling in beekeeping, honey harvesting, and beeswax processing, this article will serve as the perfect introduction to the challenging world of beekeeping. Besides finding a suit similar to the REAMTOP Professional Beekeeper Suit, you must also ensure that your hive stays healthy, you have the right hive box, the right waterer, the right feeder, and the right tools for processing and extracting honey. Small tools like the Black Menba Honey Extractor Uncapping Needle Roller make a world of difference in honey harvesting, and are just a tiny part of the overall process.
If you are new to beekeeping but interested in caring for your own hive, let’s give a quick rundown of the honey harvesting process.
Bees
Bees are industrious little critters. Given a plain wood box, called a hive box, they will fill empty wood frames with what is called a honeycomb structure. This honeycomb is made of beeswax produced by the bees themselves. The bees then fill each comb to the brim with honey. The final step includes capping off this comb with a thick layer of beeswax, which we call the ‘caps’ of the honeycomb. This cap is usually white, giving the whole honeycomb a clean, white appearance.
Harvesting
This final capping stage ensures that the honey in the comb stays clean and is stored properly for later use. In order for enthusiastic beekeepers in their REAMTOP professional beekeeper suits to get to the valuable honey underneath, they must first uncap the honeycomb, essentially removing the beeswax covering the actual honey. This beeswax is then used to make various beauty products, such as essential ingredients in lotions and lip balms. Beekeepers often not only sell honey but also sell beeswax products, making money out of every stop of the process.
Cutting off the caps has traditionally been done with a hot knife, which quickly cuts through the thick beeswax and leaves the honey open and accessible for harvesting. Using a hot knife lacks precision, however, and you end up wasting a small amount of the honey and tainting the beeswax, making it harder to refine into beauty products later on.
Using a hot knife also damages the actual honeycomb structure. While bees are industrious, there is a fair bit of work and energy needed to rebuild a damaged honeycomb. This means that there is more time between honey harvests, making you less money, and making your bees work harder than they have to.
So, many professional or well-experienced beekeepers insist on using sharp toothed combs to remove the beeswax caps. These combs puncture the cap and remove it easily without shaving off any of the foundational comb structure. These combs also leave more of the honey in the comb itself, leaving more for you to harvest.
The Black Menba
The Black Menba Honey Extractor Uncapping Needle Roller works very similarly to a comb. It is a rolling pin that is covered entirely by sharp, protruding needles. These needles puncture the caps, removing them as you roll up and down the comb. All you have to do is roll the the product across the comb and you have honey that is ready to harvest.
This is what Black Menba Honey Extractor Uncapping Needle Roller claims to do, but we are going to look past those claims of efficiency and ultimate productivity and take a look at some honest, customer reviews. Does it really remove that stubborn layer of beeswax with ease without ruining the foundational comb structure, or is it a smarter decision to stay with the traditional comb when harvesting your honey?
Product Specs
The Black Menba Honey Extractor Uncapping Needle Roller is about 12.5 inches in length, including the handle. The actual needle roller is about 4 inches in length, making it the perfect match for any traditional honeycomb frame. Each needle length is about 1 cm, making them long enough to puncture the thick layer of beeswax, but short enough to it doesn’t ruin the comb structure at the bottom of the well.
It is a simple product with a wood handle and a plastic rolling pin head.
Pricing
Because it is such a simple product, it is also relatively affordable. While something like the REAMTOP Professional Beekeeper Suit will cost you almost 50 dollars, products for de-capping combs will run you a fair bit less. You can get it on Amazon new for only $11. There seem to be no third party sellers at this time selling used for cheaper, but some may pop up at any time. The price new is affordable, as well, so you won’t be loosing a substantial amount of money if it doesn’t meet your expectations.
If you have an Amazon Prime account, you can get free, same day shipping on this item as well, which is a wonderful perk.
How It Compares
Now that we know what the Black Menba Honey Extractor Uncapping Needle Roller does and how it works, let us take a look at similar products on the market, comparing price, ease of use, design quality, and warranty.
- OTRMAX Plastic Uncapping Needle Roller Bee Honey Comb Extractor
- Bettal BeeKeeping Stainless Steel Needle Roller Uncapping Honey Comb Extracting Tool
- ETSAMOR Uncapping Needle Roller Plastic Honey Extracting Tool
Other, experienced beekeepers were unsatisfied with the products overall effectiveness and design. So, it seemed that this product was a hit with new beekeepers with little to no experience with using a hot knife or traditional comb, but a dud with professional beekeepers with a wealth of previous experience.
Buy on Amazon
This was designed to do the job of de-capping as simply and as efficiently as possible. Because the needle roller is the same width as a traditional honeycomb frame, all you have to do is roll the comb up the frame to remove the beeswax caps. This is far easier than picking each section out with a traditional comb or messily slicing the wax away with a hot knife.
It is designed be one of the easiest ways to remove caps, but customer reviews attest otherwise. Many say that despite the ease of use, the needle roller didn’t efficiently puncture all of the caps. This left many customers dissatisfied with the product, with multiple Amazon customer reviews claiming they went back to the traditional comb or knife method.
Some, on the other hand, absolutely loved the product, claiming it got the job done well nearly every time. It seemed that it was primarily new beekeepers on the review list who absolutely loved this product as an introduction to de-capping.
Black Menba has a 90-day warranty on their needle roller products. There is no satisfaction guarantee, which leaves potential buyers out of money if the product is deemed unsatisfactory.
Buy on Amazon
- Easy to use
- Very affordable
- Great for those new to beekeeping
- Doesn’t get all of the caps
- Not as effective as a traditional capping comb
Like the Black Menba, this product is also very easy to use. All you have to do is roll the pin up the frame once and all of your combs should be free of beeswax.
Designed similarly to Black Menba. Product has no customer reviews, however, so hard to gauge the products actual effectiveness.
No warranty information made readily available on their Amazon seller profile.
Buy on Amazon
- Easy to use
- Very Affordable
- Very few reviews, so hard to properly guage whether or not the product works
- Not eligible for free same day shipping withAmazon prime account
- Hard to find warranty information
This is one of the more sturdy options on the market. It is made with a classic, smooth, hardwood handle that is comfortable and easy to grasp. Each needle is made of stainless steel and is roughly 1 cm in length. The wood handle is 5 inches long, but the roller itself is only about 2.3 inches wide. This means it is one of the smallest, though most durable, on this list.
Get this for around $11 on Amazon.
Although a couple of customer reviews called this model crude, every reviewer took the time to attest to the product’s overall effectiveness. The smaller width of the roller itself means you are doing a couple of passes up and down the frame comb, but customers never complained about the roller missing any caps behind in the process.
As previously mentioned, the designed is not nearly as attractive as previous models, but the quality of the materials ensures that the product gets the job done. The stainless steel needles ensures that no cap is left behind. Customers loved this product, giving it a unanimous 4 or 5 star review.
No warranty information made readily available on their Amazon seller profile.
Buy on Amazon
- Most durable model on the list
- Very affordable
- Universally loved by customers
- No visible warranty
- Not very attractive
Design just like Black Menba with a wooden handle and a white, plastic roller. Each needle is about 1 cm long, but the roller itself is only about 2.3 inches wide. The whold product is roughly 12.5 inches long.
Again about $11 on Amazon.
Just like previous models of similar design, this product is incredibly easy to use
Plastic needle roller makes this model slightly ineffective when it comes to de-capping all of the combs. Not nearly as efficient as the Bettal Beekeeping Stainless Steel model.
No warranty found on the Amazon seller profile.
- Very affordable
- Easy to use
- Plastic material rarely gets all of the caps off
- No customer reviews make honest review of this product impossible
While the Black Menba Honey Extractor Uncapping Needle Roller has a plethora of reviews, a great deal of them are mixed, and this product seems to be a favorite of new beekeepers only. When you head out to the hives in your REAMTOP professional beekeeper suit, consider having a good needle roller to make your harvesting job easier.
The Bettal Beekeeper Stainless Steel model blows everyone away and is by far the most sturdy and efficient beeswax cap remover. So, alongside that essential REAMTOP Professional Beekeeper Suit, invest in a Bettal Beekeeper Stainless Steel needle roller to complete your beekeeping experience.