I agree with not boiling fruit, I primarily brew beer, but my wife enjoys mead, and I thought I'd givie it a whirl.
I never boil my fruit for beer, I just freeeze it, and then thaw and puree before adding it to my secondary and racking over it.
I found out after adding the Champaigne yeast that there were better yeasts to use for mead, live and learn I guess.
FWIW, there are some prickly pear cacti fruiting behind my place right now, so I think I'm going to harvest another 5-6lbs and add them to secondary when the mead reaches 1.000 SG.
The gravity of my mead went from 1.130 to 1.030 in 5 days, I htough that was incredible! I did use a nutrient addition schedule, and I'm certain that has much to do with it.
The mead right now looks like pink lemonade from the catus figs.
I think this mead will turn out well, despite the high beginning fermentation temps. It has been fermenting around 76F after the temp dropped from the inital 92F.