The Madison County Beekeepers Association owns a 9 frame radial, hand crank and a 9 frame radial electric honey extractor     The "hand crank "version was converted from a 2 frame, reversible.    Either are available for loan to any MCBA member.

To borrow the extractor contact Bill Elliott (our Vice President).    Bill will not pick up or deliver the extractor but will coordinate pick up and delivery among users.     Members can reserve an extractor more than one time per year but scheduling priority will be given to first time (per year) users.

Each user is required to thoroughly clean the extractor after using it.   Failure to do so can result in access to the extractor being denied.

The user is responsible for the safe usage of the extractor and must agree to relieve the MCBA of any liability and or personal injury resulting from the use or handling of the extractor.

Both extractors are 9 frame radial.    Radial (in this case) means that it will extract the honey from both sides of the comb at the same time.    

To use the extractor, uncap both sides of your 8 frames (assuming you are running 8 frames in an 8 or 10 frame super - usually with a hot knife) and place them in the extractor "top bar" out.   Try and balance the load by placing similar weight frames opposite each other inside the extractor. Generally, frames of honey will be heavier near the center of a super and lighter as the frames move out toward the edges of the super, so placing frame 1 from the super in the extractor and frame 8 from the super across from it and continue toward the center of the super will help balance the load.   Turn slowly to increase speed until the honey is extracted from the frames.     An unbalanced load will cause the extractor to walk all around the room when you turn the crank or increase the speed.

If at all possible, leave the honey gate open while extracting.    Allow the honey to drain out as it is extracted.    This will keep honey from overflowing the moving parts in the bottom of the extractor which can reduce the operating life of the extractor.    Obviously, you should use the gate to stop the flow while changing the catch bucket.    Leaving the gate closed while extracting is not a problem as long as you do not allowed honey to rise to the point that it is able to enter the bottom bearing as this will significantly shorten the life of the bearings.

END of File

last update 5/7/2022 brf