Re melting the honey/wax off the frames.
If you have lots of rapeseed near to your hives, unless you take the supers off as soon as possible after the rape has finished flowering, when the honey is still liquid, it will crystallise and then you cannot extract it in the normal way. I find that straight after rape has finished flowering there is not much else on the frames, and I would risk starving the bees if the weather changed for the worse. So I leave it all on and extract my honey at the end of August. We have got a huge and very heavy contraption (owned by the local Beekeepers group and I hire it for 5 pounds at a time), which is filled with water, heats the water inside the tank and the frames are put on top of the metal and slowly melt, honey/wax and all. You have to cut the comb away from the frame, so I only use non-wired foundation. As the honey/wax drips down into a metal bowl, which has two spouts at different heights (sold by Thornes), the honey goes to the bottom and can then be poured out and put through a filter/sieve, while still warm and bottled. I put most of mine into plastic containers, then when I need to bottle some more, put a plastic bucket into my Baine Marie, set the temperature to 50 deg and wait for a day or two, then filter again and bottle. Keep it in a warm room (our boiler room is warm without being too hot - ideal).
It is not the usual way, but works well for us. Normally the melting goes on for a day or so, this year it took about two days (switch it on first thing in the morning then just watch during the day), then another day of cleaning though... Bit of a palaver, but probably not more than a normal extractor would be.