Extractor advice required please

[Gordon on Iona]

Hello

I'm in my second season of beekeeping - or my first 'full' year - and am thinking about purchasing an extractor. I've only got 3 1/2 colonies at the moment, but things are going well and I might end up with half a dozen or so. I'm looking for an extractor, but am slightly baffled by the choice. I don't mind cranking a handle, but wonder if plastic will suffice or should I splash out on stainless steel. Anyone with either kind (or both!) willing to shed some light on pros and cons of each?

Thanks in advance!

Gordon

[GRIZZLY]

I've had my Thornes stainless steel 9 frame radial electric for about 35 years and it has never let me down once. The only difference from the original is that I have changed the cage for the latest stainless steel one. I've just extracted 400 pounds of honey with it. Our ass'n has purchased a plastic table top model for use by our membership, but I would find this to be too slow as it only takes 4 frames and its hand cranked. My advice is if you intend to continue with your beekeeping Buy the biggest one you can afford as expansion into more bees is a possibility and struggling to extract a mound of supers soon becomes a labour.

[The Drone Ranger]

I have a hand cranked 9 frame radial one from Thornes which I bought one year in their sale
I don't think the sale is a genuine one these days it's mostly just 2nd rate stuff made especially for the sale day
If I was buying again I would get one with a motor its hard work hand cranking
Also a motor gives you two free hands to hold it down as it jumps all over the place
The trick to getting it balanced when loading combs takes a while to get right

[Mellifera Crofter]

... Also a motor gives you two free hands to hold it down as it jumps all over the place
The trick to getting it balanced when loading combs takes a while to get right

My mentor mounted his huge radial extractor on a three-wheel trolley to steady that jumping about.
Kitta

[Adam]

My extractor is the one here which takes a drill as the motor. Works fine until I forget to drain it and then the moving parts pick up on the honey in the bottom and the (drill) motor starts to smell! That's my own fault. The extractor works fine.

http://www.thebeebusiness.co.uk/range_extractors.php

Stainless is easy to clean and will probably last longer.

[Feckless Drone]

Hello

I'm in my second season of beekeeping - or my first 'full' year - and am thinking about purchasing an extractor. I've only got 3 1/2 colonies at the moment, but things are going well and I might end up with half a dozen or so. I'm looking for an extractor, but am slightly baffled by the choice. I don't mind cranking a handle, but wonder if plastic will suffice or should I splash out on stainless steel. Anyone with either kind (or both!) willing to shed some light on pros and cons of each?

Thanks in advance!

Gordon

Gordon - do you get a lot of nectar from seaweed out there? I've seen/heard advice about steering clear of plastic as keepers migrate to steel, never seen anyone say the reverse. The choice of motorised or not may depend on what size of operation you intend to run.
The hassle of working with something too large is storage and moving about. Can you borrow from or take supers to trial at another beekeepers?

Alice says hello!

[fatshark]

Gordan
I've scaled up from 2-3 colonies to about 6 honey production colonies (with others for queen rearing). I bought a manual tangential extractor in a rush of early enthusiasm and have regretted it pretty much ever since. Last w/e I extracted about 120 frames using a borrowed Thornes food-grade polythene radial motorised extractor. It was a revelation ... doing this lot by hand would have been murder. I'll be buying a 8/9 frame motorised SS radial from Lega or Giordan as soon as I have some cash. The polythene was OK but was a little battered and was less easy to clean than stainless steel.

If you run the extractor with the gate open you can filter it directly and the extracted honey won't prevent the cage rotating. I bolted mine to a large and solid hive stand and it didn't bounce around too much. Just remember that two full supers = one 30lb honey bucket and make sure you replace the bucket before it overflows.

The one good thing about the Lega manual one I bought was that it had a 50kg tank underneath into which the honey flowed. This raised the height a bit and added stability once it started to fill up. I think it was from Maisemores.

Size wise there's not a huge amount of difference between a four frame manual tangential and an 8 frame motorised radial.

[Trog]

Gordan
I've scaled up from 2-3 colonies to about 6 honey production colonies (with others for queen rearing). I bought a manual tangential extractor in a rush of early enthusiasm and have regretted it pretty much ever since. Last w/e I extracted about 120 frames using a borrowed Thornes food-grade polythene radial motorised extractor. It was a revelation ... doing this lot by hand would have been murder. I'll be buying a 8/9 frame motorised SS radial from Lega or Giordan as soon as I have some cash. The polythene was OK but was a little battered and was less easy to clean than stainless steel.

If you run the extractor with the gate open you can filter it directly and the extracted honey won't prevent the cage rotating. I bolted mine to a large and solid hive stand and it didn't bounce around too much. Just remember that two full supers = one 30lb honey bucket and make sure you replace the bucket before it overflows.

The one good thing about the Lega manual one I bought was that it had a 50kg tank underneath into which the honey flowed. This raised the height a bit and added stability once it started to fill up. I think it was from Maisemores.

Size wise there's not a huge amount of difference between a four frame manual tangential and an 8 frame motorised radial.

This looks like good advice.

Always worth remembering that honey flows silently, too!!

[Bumble]

Always worth remembering that honey flows silently, too!!

And it's very difficult to get out of a kitchen carpet!

[GRIZZLY]

And it's very difficult to get out of a kitchen carpet!

Bees are good at removing honey from carpets.