Honey Extractor

Why don’t you borrow my 2-frame manual extractor and try it out. I live in Glassell Park. What part of town are you in?

David
david@buzzedhoneys.com

Hey, Alex—you are my student in Riverside, yes? To answer your question (something is wrong with the system, I am not getting the posts to my inbox, so just checked the postings and found your inquiry) I share a 3 frame, hand crank extractor with Josip Benko and find it entirely appropriate for the size of my operation. (23 colonies) The cages hold Lang frames without wires or foundation very well, and after uncapping with a uncapping fork, I let the honey drain through a double screen strainer mounted on top of a 5 gallon bucket. The bucket is fitted with a honeygate, so this minimal straining is put right into jars from the lower bucket. I advise having more than one 5 gal bucket with a honey gate so when the first fills, you may switch in the 2nd one.
I do find the deep frames spin much more smoothly than the medium frames, I think because the load is most equally distributed in the deeps. Most of my hives are all deeps anyway, so I just have to suffer a lot more wobbling when extracting the mediums. I put the extractor on a heavy folded towel on a strong wooden arm chair. This is important, for most of the extractors do not have legs unless purchased separately. You must brace the extractor while turning the crank to minimize the vibrations and jumping around. Also, when frames are filled unequally, they don’t spin well. Try to balance the load. I would think a two frame would naturally bounce around more than a 3 frame because of the unevenness of the load balancing potential.
In any case, I think sharing this kind of big equipment with other beeks means you don’t have to lay out all the money, saves resources and storage of the thing can be spread around. I can’t speak to price since I have never bought, but a LOT of cheap stuff is coming from China.