Where are these extractors made? One has to keep in mind the quotation by Russell Baker: ‘The goal of all inanimate objects is to resist man and ultimately defeat him.’ Extractors have motors and moving parts in addition to various types of electronic controls. A pad of paper and a pencil are handy to jot down some questions. Now the catalogs are spread out on the table. So meetings are a great place to ask questions. Meetings of all sizes are attended by both beekeepers and suppliers with all sizes of operations. In addition, in January 2017 the two national meetings will be a joint one. The three regional associations, EAS, HAS and WAS hold their meeting during the Summer. It’s time to see when some state meetings will be held, and where. Since the extractor purchase can be done any time before next honey season, it might be a good idea to attend some big meetings where bee equipment company representatives will be present. The Internet, or even the telephone, can be reserved for asking questions. The catalogs can be spread out on a table. It is going to be easier to work from a collection of catalogs rather than online. It may be best to determine freight after an extractor has been selected. Dadant has eleven locations across the country. However, a peek into that catalog shows ‘Free Shipping Even on Extractors.’ That could be helpful in comparing costs. Mann Lake has four locations, Minnesota, California, Pennsylvania and Texas, and two additional pickup locations in California. Brushy Mountain has the main shop in North Carolina, but branches in Pennsylvania and Oregon. Cowen is in California, and Maxant is in Massachusetts. Betterbee is in New York and Blue Sky is in Ohio. Kelley just has one outlet, in Clarkson, KY. The distance from the supplier determines the cost. One of the costs of a big extractor is going to be shipping –call it ‘freight’ because a big heavy extractor, packed for travel, is going to come in a big truck. True, there are many local beekeeping suppliers but their large extractors, if they actually sell them, come from some of the few manufacturers. Kelley Beekeeping, Betterbee and Blue Sky. But there are other equipment suppliers, such as Mann Lake, Brushy Mountain. Maxant and Dadant seem to be mentioned quite a bit. Chit-chat about hand-driven ones, small ones, lots of comments from really small-scale beekeepers. Well, just putting in ‘honey extractors’ there’s not really much of interest. It will be motor-driven! And those big ones are radial so no need to reverse frames as in a tangential.įirst let’s take a look on the Internet to see if there is anything about big extractors. (That is still an all-nighter with an extractor that takes only a few frames.) Bumper year – 450 frames! It is time to select an extractor. Jump forward three or four years to the goal of 15 hives. So at 30 frames per hive times five hives – no wonder it took ‘forever.’ That’s 150 frames! Last year was a poor honey crop year – too much rain at blossom time so those five hives only filled about 50 frames. That meant 30 frames of a wonderful wildflower mixture. This year, good weather and profuse blooms meant that each of the five hives had three mediums completely filled. Not every year will be a bumper-crop year but that sort of year is when you really need a good motor-driven extractor that will accommodate the quantity of honey produced.Īll the honey supers are 10-frame medium depth. That will take three or four years but now is the time to see what is available for a 15-hive operation and have it in place and ready for the next extraction time next year. It is now time to consider a new extractor, one that will be useful for the next several years since he plans to expand up to about 15 hives. Besides, someone else in the club had reserved the extractor for Sunday afternoon. It is very sad to see results of the bees’ hard work all slimy and fermenting. Could the extraction have been spread over several evenings? Not in small hive beetle territory! He could lose some of that harvest. His helper friends slowly left through the evening. Never again! The club’s two-frame, hand-cranked extractor was just fine a few years ago for Robert’s two hives but this year with five hives in a bumper-crop year extracting the honey crop was an all-night project.
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