How to Build a Honey Extractor

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As animal husbandry costs go, the prices of bees and beekeeping supplies are quite a bargain, but setting up an apiary still runs into money if you have many colonies. My husband, Dwayne, and I got into a home honey operation a couple of years ago (it sort of sneaked up on us), and from the start we've tried to hold down on cash outlay by making some of our equipment.

We've found, for example, that we can save substantially by building our own bee housing. We bought our first hive and super and Dwayne made the rest, using the commercial products for patterns so that the parts of all units are interchangeable. Since we have quite a bit of scrap lumber handy, the only investment was the time spent in construction. (See Image Gallery of The Little Golden Folk for a diagram of a hive.) 

We've also learned to economize by finding substitutes for some conventional equipment. If you camp and have mosquito nets, for instance, they'll work fine as bee veils. If you carpenter and own a small prybar, it will do the job of a hive tool.

One recommended item—the honey extractor, which removes honey from the comb—looked like a pretty demanding do-it-yourself project and had no obvious counterparts lying around the house. So, at first, we thought we'd just do without it. Our initial attempt at harvesting honey, however, showed us our mistake. There just isn't any other practical way to separate a large amount of honey from the wax in which it's stored. The thick fluid can be squeezed out of the cells, but that takes forever and destroys the structure of the comb. An extractor preserves those neat little hexagons, which saves work for the bees (and, in the long run, time and money for their keeper).

It's particularly essential that you have an extractor if you intend to sell honey. Anyone who has a surplus to market has too much to separate by hand ... and in our experience there's a limited market for cut comb honey. Most people prefer the product free of wax.

Well, we gave in, checked the prices of extractors in the current catalog from Dadant & Sons ... and found the rates higher than we cared to pay: $75.00 to $85.00 for a hand-operated machine and $165 and up for electric models. (Such equipment comes in various sizes and the prices vary accordingly. In A.I. Root's December 1974 catalog, a two-frame hand powered extractor is quoted at $86.90, an electric version of the same item at $135.80, and a three-frame electric machine at $163.95.—MOTHER.) After a bit of thought, Dwayne decided he could build a similar device himself at much less cost. When he got through, he'd invested about $30.00 and come up with an electrically operated honey separator that works like a charm ... put together from materials that were on hand or easily obtainable from a local hardware store.

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