How to Build a Homemade Honey Extractor

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PHOTO: FOTOLIA/IRONCHKA
The basket works on the same principle as the spinning tub of a washing machine: It turns with enough speed to force the honey out of the comb and fling it against the side of the garbage can, where it runs down the wall and out the bottom drain.

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. (Click here for a diagram of a bee 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.

How to Build a Homemade Honey Extractor

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).

  • Published on May 1, 1975
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