An uncapping machine was designed and fabricated to uncap both two sides of honeycomb leading to remove the thin wax layer that seals the honey cells. The developed uncapping machine is tested at the Agric. Eng. Res. Inst (2019) under four feeding chain speeds (10, 15, 20 and 25 rpm), four spiral knife speeds (150, 200, 250 and 300 rpm) and four levels of heating temperature for the uncapping device (without heating, 35 , 40 and 45 0 C). The interaction effect between different parameters for the uncapping device resulted in 192 tests. Measurements were taken for the machine productivity, uncapping efficiency and power requirement. The obtained results concluded that the uncapping machine can be operated successfully at the optimum operating parameters of 10 rpm feeding chain speed, 300 rpm spiral knife speed and 40 °C of spiral knife temperature. These operating conditions cause an uncapping efficiency of 95.2 %, productivity of 240 frames / h, consumed specific energy of 8.9×10-3 kW.h/frame. The uncapping machine reduced the estimated cost by 3 times than the manual knife uncapping. Therefore, the developed uncapping honeycombs machine is considered an effective solution for precise controlling of uncapping honeycomb invade Egyptian beekeepers and it gives continuous satisfactory uncapping.

Mint plant was dried using greenhouse solar dryer. Two of the forced convection operating modes (continuous and intervals) were used and compared with the open sun drying method. The drying kinetics of mint (Mentha spicata L.) in terms of moisture content, moisture ratio, drying time and drying rate was investigated. The continuous forced convection mode gives the highest drying rate for mint than the interval mode and open sun drying. The drying data of solar and open sun drying of mint were fitted to ten thin layer drying models and the Modified Henderson and Pabis model satisfactorily described the drying behavior of mint with highest R 2 (0.99) and lowest P and RMSE values than other models. The results of the study are very useful for commercial scale drying of mint to optimize the drying process and to achieve a superior quality dried product.INTRODUCTION int leaves can be used as a medicinal and aromatic plant. It helps in colds, flu, fever, poor digestion, food poisoning, rheumatism, motion sickness, hiccups, stings, earaches, flatulence and for throat and sinus ailments (Akpinar, 2010). Because of high moisture content (78-85%, w.b), mint is ordinarily dried for market, in order to slow microbial growth and biodegradation and to reach a final product with an effectively increased shelf life (Tarhan et al., 2010;Sallam et al., 2015). Also, drying brings about a substantial reduction in weight and volume, minimizing packaging, storage, and transportation costs (Doymaz, 2006;Kadam and Samuel, 2006). Drying is the most common method of medicinal plant preservation and due to high investment and energy costs, drying is also a large expense in medicinal plant production.

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