BBKA Forum

British Beekeepers Association Official Forum 

  • Looking For An Extractor

  • Please state your location & condition of the item for sale. Contact should be made through private messages.
Please state your location & condition of the item for sale. Contact should be made through private messages.
 #7399  by Japey Edge
 26 May 2020, 10:25
NigelP wrote:
29 Apr 2020, 08:59
Best I can offer is spend as much as you can and go tangential and electric ASAP.....at first extracting honey is exciting and new but it rapidly becomes a chore with many bottlenecks.
Think of each jar 12 oz of honey as £5 in your pocket then this basic one will set you back 100 jars or in real terms about 3 supers of honey.
https://www.abelo.co.uk/shop/extractors/electric-6-frame-tangential-extractor-minima-line/
The gears going faulty mid-extraction yesterday helped persuade my wife that returning this thing and buying an electric extractor is the way to go. She's on board now.

The one you link is a top contender Nigel. Just before I take the plunge - what is everyone's experience with radial extractors? To someone who has little experience with extractors, not having to turn frames around sounds very appealing.

What extractors do forum members have? Frame capacity, manual/electric, radial/tangential?
 #7401  by Steve 1972
 26 May 2020, 11:43
That extractor must be faulty or a cheap copy Jazz..mine is over 5 yrs old and the gears are still sound not that i use the handle anymore..extracting Radial is definitely the way forward...it is quicker with no turning of the frames required and you have less chance of blowing the frames..
 #7596  by Japey Edge
 04 Jun 2020, 14:37
I think this extractor is a faulty item.
The stainless steel cage shows signs of corrosion or defect. The gearbox output shaft flakes red paint into the honey.
This paint has passed through the filters also.
Around 10 litres of honey going back to the bees - hopefully these flakes won't cause them issues.

Sickening. I think I'll go for the £600 Abelo radial 12 frame.
 #7597  by stechad
 04 Jun 2020, 16:08
Japey Edge wrote:
04 Jun 2020, 14:37
I think this extractor is a faulty item.
The stainless steel cage shows signs of corrosion or defect. The gearbox output shaft flakes red paint into the honey.
This paint has passed through the filters also.
Around 10 litres of honey going back to the bees - hopefully these flakes won't cause them issues.

Sickening. I think I'll go for the £600 Abelo radial 12 frame.
I think i would be complaining to the supplier Jazz, it may be an economy model but it still has to be fit for purpose and was obviously faulty from the onset.
 #7598  by AndrewLD
 04 Jun 2020, 16:11
Thoughts on extractors:
Radial - process more frames at a time, don't have to turn them - mine is a nine frame radial from Thorne (£525) manual made of heavy duty food grade polythene. If you go for cheaper, lightweight polythene beware of UV degradation and frost damage! Mine can be converted to electric for circa £415. Perfectly adequate for my 6 hives - not even tempted to go electric. I have an tangential six frame cage but tend not to use it. I use Hoffman side bar frames which made the tangential a waste of money :(

Tangential - processes less frames and you have to turn them which means a lot more handling. The advantage of a tangential is that you can spin out a frame at a higher G-force while the cage supports the comb but you must turn it when you have taken some out or you can still collapse the mid-rib of the comb. I believe that some honey can only be got out using a tangential but I have struggled with that and now just heat out granulated honey. Heather honey is in a category of its own and I believe (Nigel?) needs to be pressed out????

There are stainless steel extractors from abroad that are cheaper than my plastic one but be careful - read the small print, one supplier only makes extractors at a certain time of year and you have to pay with order despite assurances of money back etc etc.

If you are wisely being cautious with money then an association extractor is an obvious option. Given that many beginners buy things like extractors early on but then give up, there are always extractors coming up for sale through association websites/newsletters for a fraction of their original cost and one or two hold auctions but not right now.
Beg or borrow until things settle down and come back to normal?
 #7599  by NigelP
 04 Jun 2020, 16:31
Jazz something worth thinking about is whether they sell removeable screens for the 12 frame. This means you can extract brood frames tangentially as well as your super frames radially Something you will need to do from time to time. If they do sell screens for it, they will probably set you back about another £100
However....for that extra £100 you could think about the 20 frame electric minima. If it's the same diameter (and it should be) as my 20 frame extractor (the one with the red control box on the side) this is big enough to extract 12 National standard brood frame radially, although you do need some elastic bands /sly grin/. So you don't need to buy the 20 frame screens. As it has a larger diameter it generates more "G" force and is much more stable, even with uneven loading (not totally, but you can get to 7/10 speeds even when youve forgotton to uncap one side of a super frame). This would future proof you as well as it speeding up the whole job of extraction.
Although the 20 frame looks huge it fits through a standard doorway. Some of the other 20 frame extractors need their legs taking off.
I would ring Abelo and talk to them about what you are after.
 #7603  by AndrewLD
 04 Jun 2020, 17:45
I guess the one thing you have not said is where you are going with your beekeeping?
You have recently shown us an average size modern garden with a stand that can hold probably more hives than might be wise (I think you are finding out that colonies can have their off-periods when you don't want them that close).
Are you planning on going down the out-apiaries route with 10, 20, 40> hives - in which case Nigel's advice makes perfect sense..
Otherwise, it makes no sense at all - and to justify a 20-frame extractor you are going to need stacks of supers and a large bee-shed to hold all the gear, including the all the spare hives to deal with swarming.
 #7605  by NigelP
 04 Jun 2020, 19:15
Not really sure why one ever needs to justify the cost of the equipment you buy. Bee farmers maybe, as cost and time is a commodity here. As hobbyists we are free to spend as much or as little as we like. In general I think many are far too parsimonious.... I've always bought big and best and never regretted it. The chore of honey extraction is exactly that...a chore. Anything to make that easier is worthwhile, particularly if it's paid for by money from honey sales. A 20 frame extractor takes 2 supers spaced at 10 per super. With my steam uncapping knife I can get extract between 7-8 supers per hour. Bliss.
A single decent hives should produce (assuming forage and weather are fair) between 6 to 10 supers of honey per annum . That is a lot of extraction time.
The next thing on my wish list is a second 20 frame extractor. Now that I've overcome the uncapping bottleneck it's caused an unexpected extractor bottleneck.
 #7606  by Japey Edge
 04 Jun 2020, 19:52
I'm not entirely sure where I'm going. Up until a few days ago I wanted to grow my beekeeping into a reasonably sized outfit and generate a steady side income. Now I feel like I can't do anything right... This extractor issue has knocked my confidence for selling honey. I have 1000 labels to use up too.

Storage is a good point. I have a single door to carry it through on the side of my garage.

I've always said "buy cheap, buy twice" but I think now I'm hammering that into my head and paying the extra for reputable brands.
 #7607  by NigelP
 04 Jun 2020, 21:15
Japey Edge wrote:
04 Jun 2020, 19:52
Now I feel like I can't do anything right...
Join the club Jazz. This is the "crazy" time. You spend a disproportionate amount of time on the hives that go wrong and forget about the ones where it's all going right.....and you get lots of honey from those. Every year is very different, this appears to be a swarmy one. It all takes time to get those hives back in line and always seems to take far too long wbich is why you are thinking you can't do anything right..... But it always works out in the end.....until you get to September supersedures /Wry grin/