Tangential versus radial

[Bridget]

I’m sure this has been discussed before but I don’t seem to be able to find it.
We now have nine hives and I need to have my own extractor, motorised. We are mainly heather but each year get some blossom and this year it may turn out to be quite a bit of blossom. I feel that borrowing an manual extractor and sitting on it whilst it bounces round the room should be in the past. But I can’t work out which would suit me best, radial or tangential. Each time I think I know some other snippet of information crops up and I don’t know again! Any thought would be very gratefully received and I don’t envisage increasing our colonies to make it kworth while going for anything in £800+ range.
Our local association has not quite got the memberships or the funds to purchase one yet.
Thanks
Bridget


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[fatshark]

Hi Bridget

I have about the same number of production hives, with a few more for queen rearing etc. I scaled up to a 9 frame motorised radial a few years ago and it was a very worthwhile purchase. I no longer have the physique of Charles Atlas from cranking the handle on the extractor for days in a row. Those who know me know I remain toned and athletic. Ahem!

I've not done heather honey so defer to the many others here who know about looseners (?), the benefits of tangential etc. for that sort of honey. However, for standard 'hedgerow' honey, OSR etc. I'm more than happy with my radial extractor.

I bought a SAF Natura Ritmo (http://theapiarist.org/saf-natura-extractor/). In 2014 it was about 75% of the price you quoted I think. I think it's £660 now from Bee Equipped (http://beeequipped.co.uk/component/option,com_marketplace/page,show_ad/catid,11/adid,41/Itemid,29/) in Derbyshire which was where I bought it. It was appreciably better finished when I compared it with machines supplied by Abelo and Thorne, unless you looked at high-end machines into the £1k+ price range.

2014 was another bumper year and it paid for itself the first evening extracting. I remain pleased with it.

It'll do National or Langs but if you want to use the tangential cages for National brood frames you'll need to cut them down to size (as they only [used to?] provide them for Langs).

The cage is resin, not stainless steel. The barrel is of course stainless. The gate is plastic but I only ever run them open so this isn't an issue.

Finally re. the tangential vs. radial ... I suspect the frames are wetter after a radial spin, but I can live with that as I hate reversing frames and quite a lot of my super frames are foundationless and might not stand up to a tangential spin.

PM me if you have any specific questions.

PS It can still bounce around the room, particularly when spinning one frame of crystallised OSR and 8 frames of runny blossom honey!

[Bridget]

Thanks for that. That is the same spinner that I'm looking at. There is a guy selling one for £460 incl delivery, never used but been sat in a showroom. Might not be the latest model but I'm not bothered about that. Sometimes with the heather I get very little out with the tangential and end up with broken combs and then crushing the comb. My main requirement though is not having to start every spring with new foundation in every super, it seems such a waste when the bees are having to do double the work.


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[gavin]

With 9 hives and a tight budget my preference would probably have been to just use a press and either scrape down (from wired foundation) or cut out (from thin foundation or starter strips). Mine has a 9 litre capacity and cost £250+ but Jon recently bought an 18 litre one for much much less.

Yes, they have to build comb again but you can make candles with the wax harvest :-)

If you are wanting to keep the comb then you do need a loosener as well as a tangential extractor. A full frame Norwegian Sjodi's loosener is about £3.5k but you can sometimes pick up a secondhand one around £1k.

There is one shown here: https://apimo.dk/programs/nordicbeekeeping1999.pdf

Abelo are selling one, not sure if it is the same thing:

https://www.abelo.co.uk/shop/honey-processing/lyson-heather-loosener/

I doubt that heather honey will come out adequately by spinning unless you loosen it first and then extract tangentially. It is a pain to have to stop and flip the frames twice - which is why some folk invest in an extractor that automatically flips them over. At least in my 16-frame (radial) Giordan extractor, when you add the baskets you can put two super frames tangentially in each of the four baskets (or just four deep frames, one in each basket). I say basket, it is really just a flattish wire flat piece with bent-over wire bits at the base to hold the frames in place and hooks to grab onto the top big hoop of the radial basket.

I did lose a few frames but only those which had set on storage. Most comb came though fine, looking a little battered but the bees will fix everything quickly when they get access in spring.

As for that bouncing, these days I'm getting better at balancing the extractor and recent harvests have been a delight to extract with runny honey that comes out easily.

[Bridget]

Abelo are selling one, not sure if it is the same thing:

https://www.abelo.co.uk/shop/honey-processing/lyson-heather-loosener/

Ha ha, nice price. However there is a handheld one that is a bit cheaper at £90. Has anyone had any success with this?
https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20180718/c18925636a7da2b15a4020707398256d.jpg
Sorry v small picture


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[gavin]

Ha ha, nice price. However there is a handheld one that is a bit cheaper at £90. Has anyone had any success with this?

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Bought one, thought the springs a bit tight, decided to loosen the nuts, oops!! One project for the coming winter is to find a way to get the pins back in position (I think gaffer tape will be involved), try it out, and sell it on.

I don't see why it wouldn't work. It is just the same pins. Could be hard work with multiple pushes into comb (flat on a board) at several positions on each side.

I've seen the spiky paint roller things sold for loosening honey. Don't think they work well.

[Bridget]

Bought one, thought the springs a bit tight, decided to loosen the nuts, oops!! One project for the coming winter is to find a way to get the pins back in position (I think gaffer tape will be involved), try it out, and sell it on.

I don't see why it wouldn't work. It is just the same pins. Could be hard work with multiple pushes into comb (flat on a board) at several positions on each side.

I've seen the spiky paint roller things sold for loosening honey. Don't think they work well.

Do you think the pins go through both sides if the comb or would you have to turn the frame over?



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[Thymallus]

Simplify, go for cut comb and crush. ?
The time taken to loosen and extract tangentially is excruciating. Even with one of the mechanical 3K lever frames with pins. Each frame to loosen and then put in extractor. If you do go that route you want tangential as larger g force over whole frame so more efficient as the loosneres are not 100% efficient. We found we left about 1/4 to a 1/5th behind. They never came out dry.
The hand held one you showed works fine but you will end up with muscles like Popeye. I've never worried about bees having to draw new comb next season, if there is a flow on they draw it for fun. It's not a problem, apart from in many books that tell us how valuable drawn comb is. Drawn brood comb excepted.
Heather is my favorite crop, I love the stuff. Iv'e found, for me at least, the best method for extracting from the leftovers after cut comb or just cutting out a whole frame of honey was a hydro-press. The wine crushers you see offered as heather honey presses ( at 2x price from a wine supply merchant) suffer from blockage and you need to take crushed comb out and break up and re-extract as so much honey is still trapped inside. I've now relegated mine to the attic
The hydro-presses give about 2 tons per square inch on mains water.
Not cheap but quality kit.

2953

[Thymallus]

Abelo are selling one, not sure if it is the same thing:

https://www.abelo.co.uk/shop/honey-processing/lyson-heather-loosener/

I doubt that heather honey will come out adequately by spinning unless you loosen it first and then extract tangentially.
My understanding is the Abelo is a "clone" of the other. Yes you must loosen heather honey if spinning. We wondered it the extra G force with radial screens on a 20 frame extractor would force it out without loosening. No. Unless anyone has any other ideas it's crush and strain or loosen and spin.

[fatshark]

Thymallus ... do you have a link to one of those presses?
Will they work on a non mains supply (reasonable pressure) and do they use excessive amounts of water?
I'm (slowly) moving to a heather area with a private water supply, so have a vested interest ... and no money left for a loosener :(

[Thymallus]

Thymallus ... do you have a link to one of those presses?
Will they work on a non mains supply (reasonable pressure) and do they use excessive amounts of water?
I'm (slowly) moving to a heather area with a private water supply, so have a vested interest ... and no money left for a loosener :(
Yes, try Vigo (http://www.vigopresses.co.uk/Catalogue/Fruit-Presses/20-litre-Hydropress-91318), They have a range of sizes to suits ones needs. They seem to have shot up in price since I bought mine.
They don't use a lot of water, there is tall bladder inside that expands out as water pressure builds inside forcing the honey out, so you only fill the bladder, it's not through flow.
. Very efficient. Only downside is you need to be sure pressure inside doesn't go above 3 bars as the safety operates and water will jet out of the safety valve.
I don't know if they would work on non mains, off the top of my head I think they recommend up to 3 bars.
But have to say they are the bees knees when it comes to heather honey crushing. Can also be used for crushing cappings rather than letting them drain.

[Adam]

I have one of these - http://www.thebeebusiness.co.uk/range_extractors.php with a Bosch drill I happened to have which I fitted myself by removing the chuck. It does 8 super frames radially and has a couple of stainless frames that sit inside and allow me to put brood frames in and extract one side then the other. I don't get any heather so I can't comment on that. However the extractor works well for my needs. For cleaning, the drill and holder can be removed with a spanner before I carry the extractor outside so it can be scrubbed and hosed down without worry that the motor will get wet. The extractor sits on a stand with castors and then the top is chained at 3 points to stop it vibrating (too) much when there's an uneven load.

[Thymallus]

Adam how much control do you have over speeds with a drill?
I ask as I've recently upgraded from a 9 frame motorised to an Abelo 20 frames. With the 9 frame I had three speeds and blew lots of super frames over a season even when trying to balance up at speed 1.
The new 20 frame jobbie has 10 speeds and extraction of honey starts at speed three, plus (and perhaps more importantly) it doesn't race to get up to speed it has a gradual speed increase, whereas my old Thornes job tried to get up to speed as fast as possible. I've yet to blow a super frame this season although a few brood frames have burst on me.
Not sure what relevance this has to heather honey extraction, just my muses about possibly some extractors going to max speed far too fast.

[Adam]

The speed control works very well I am pleased to say. The drill has a little dial on the trigger for speed so once the motor is turning and the drill is locked on (squeeze the trigger and press the little button at the side to hold the trigger in), you simply rotate the dial to get the desired speed. With 8 full frames, the drill slowly speeds up over 10 - 15 seconds even when set for a fair speed. As the frames empty of honey, the drill speeds up just a little bit more - so I can be doing something else for a few moments whilst the honey is being spun out. The motor will struggle and overheat if the honey rises high enough so the rotating cage/frame drags on it. This wouldn't usually happen as there is enough reserve space at the bottom of the extractor for 8 frames worth of honey. I have only blown frames if they are unbalanced somehow and they are being spin at quite a lick. One failed yesterday - first for a couple of years - it had pollen in one side of it.

[Kate Atchley]

Ha ha, nice price. However there is a handheld one that is a bit cheaper at £90. Has anyone had any success with this?
https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20180718/c18925636a7da2b15a4020707398256d.jpg
Sorry v small picture


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Abelo lent me one of these hand-held looseness when they first appeared but I returned it. I couldn’t get it to work effectively and it was slow and damaging to the combs. It was easier to use a metal roller though they’re not very good at loosening either.

In Lochaber after several years trying to use wired frames and extract non-Heather and heather honey (tangential extractor) I gave up and went back to strips of foundation in separate supers for the heather. It’s a bore but using a press, though slow, is a pleasing process, especially if you like to make candles.

Agree with Gavin on this.


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