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.

[fatshark]

Bees are good at removing honey from carpets.

But not the bruising associated with the glancing contact of a frying pan and the back of my head ... an inevitable consequence of the carpet-related escape of a few litres of honey.

[Trog]

Some folk swear by bee-sting therapy. Or you could have tried a honey poultice!

[The Drone Ranger]

The sting from a le creuset is to be feared by the beekeeper

[Trog]

le creuset? there's posh! A better class of 'beump' on the head [why do I now have the Pink Panther theme running round what passes for my brain?]

Oh, I do love this forum, in which a perfectly normal discussion about extractors wanders off into nonsense!

Perhaps, however, we'd better return to the matter in hand? Comments re extractors ...?

[The Drone Ranger]

Nonsense??? yooou cheeekeey minky

Get one with a motor and which is made of stainless steel and radial
If not just sell cut comb till you can pay for one
That's my best-est advice to quote Benny addressing Misss Diane

[Jon]

That's my best-est advice to quote Benny addressing Misss Diane

DR outs himself as a fan of the UK's worst ever soap.

[The Drone Ranger]

DR outs himself as a fan of the UK's worst ever soap.
You missed Eldorado then :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahA7LNg8JN8
Sorry Trog of topic again
This extractor looks fairly solid
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/4-FRAME-GOOD-QUALITY-HONEY-EXTRACTOR-Central-gear-wind-/281142595626?pt=UK_Pet_Supplies_Bee_Keeping&clk_rvr_id=510955799988

This one is twice the price but motor driven and 6 frame
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/6-Frame-Electric-Honey-Extractor-24-MONTHS-WARRANTY-/271235543982?pt=UK_Pet_Supplies_Bee_Keeping&clk_rvr_id=510956996329

[fatshark]

DR they're both tangential ... I'm with you in post #15 ... stainless steel, radial and motorised. I'd also add 9 frame. Unless the OP has no plans of scaling up to >4 hives. Like I didn't ;)

Has the OP disappeared? This isn't like that waspkeeping thread is it? We're awash with jaspers here so whoever perfected the art of queen wasp raising ought to be ashamed of themselves.

[Jon]

You missed Eldorado then :)

Se me fue. Ya me acuerdo.

There was another called 'Triangle' about a ferry which travelled between 3 North Sea ports which was actually worse than crossroads or El Dorado.
We used to watch it when we were students to great mirth.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangle_%28TV_series%29

[Bumble]

you could have tried a honey poultice!
Honey poultice made from the sticky carpet, to deal with the le creuset bruises? Didn't think of that.

I've got a 4 frame manual tangential extractor. I could hire a motorised radial from the association, but it's always in use when I need it and it's stored miles away so takes a couple of hours to collect. I'll eventually sell the manual one on and replace with a motorised one - but in the meantime I'm exercising my biceps, cheaper than a gym!

[The Drone Ranger]

DR they're both tangential ... I'm with you in post #15 ... stainless steel, radial and motorised. I'd also add 9 frame. Unless the OP has no plans of scaling up to >4 hives. Like I didn't ;)

Has the OP disappeared? This isn't like that waspkeeping thread is it? We're awash with jaspers here so whoever perfected the art of queen wasp raising ought to be ashamed of themselves.

You are dead right there Fatshark a radial is best
Didn't notice that little detail :)

I missed Triangle it sounds riveting

[lindsay s]

The six frame Thomas extractor I bought from Steele & Brodie about twenty years ago is still like new. Because it’s tangential the only down side is having to turn the frames around. If anyone out there is thinking of upgrading their extractor then you could always go for this. http://www.thomas-apiculture.com/produits/materiel-pro-de-miellerie/la-combinee/ Unfortunately I don’t have a big enough kitchen.:(

[The Drone Ranger]

I just want one with a motor
The manual has the sweat pouring off me in the warm extractor room

[GRIZZLY]

D.R. why don't you electrify your extractor ?. Thornes sell the conversion kit - much cheaper than replacing the complete unit.

[The Drone Ranger]

D.R. why don't you electrify your extractor ?. Thornes sell the conversion kit - much cheaper than replacing the complete unit.

Thanks grizzly I will look into that possibility in the closed season :)

[fatshark]

I'm resurrecting this thread to find out if anyone has experience of the quality of SafNatura extractors - specifically their 9 frame motorised radial units? (http://www.safnatura.com/eng/prodotti-lista.asp?cat=extractors|extractor-ø-525&qi=880f3e5f86c4b0118525ddad1aaecc57) I'm after a radial SS machine for National supers.

I was (whisper it) shopping for Apidea's from Bee Equipped for Crimbo and noticed their pricing on these extractors (http://beeequipped.co.uk/component/option,com_marketplace/page,show_ad/catid,11/adid,41/Itemid,29/). This is a few hundred quid less than the equivalents from Giordan or others, and about £200 less even than the sale prices (http://www.bees-online.co.uk/view.asp?ID=926) from Maisemores.

I guess the key questions I'm interested in are the overall quality of construction, whether the design is good (tap at the bottom, with no lip for example), robustness, ease of cleaning, availability of spares (which looks good), can I sneak it onto the premises without the wife noticing etc.?

[Rosie]

I bought an extractor from Bee Equipped about 12 years ago. It was not Safnatura but looked very similiar and it's been faultless. The differences I can see with mine and the SafNatura is that mine has plastic gearing (which I utilised when I later motorised it) as opposed to the steel ones in the new one, and mine has a welded-in honey gate at the bottom where the new one has a plastic one. I see that as a potential problem because I imagine it would be impossible to get the plastic one as low as a welded one. Hence it might be a pain getting the last of the honey out of the bottom.

If no-one else can offer any first hand experience with the machine I would check on the details of the valve mounting.

[fatshark]

Saf Natura extractors … first impressions are very good. I bought one this week from Bee Equipped. The stainless steel is very well finished, with no coarse edges as I've seen on a couple of other models I looked at. The cage is resin. The one they illustrate is the electronic one - programmable - but not the one they sell. Mine has a standard manual motor. Reversible. The honey gate is perhaps a little too high (as Rosie suggests), but tipping the extractor got most of the dregs out. It dealt with ~120 frames yesterday without me so much as breaking sweat :)