Home-Built Honey Extractor

Home-Built Honey Extractor FARM HOME Miscellaneous 30-6-9 Amateur beekeeper Duane Houser of Butler, Ind., used the brine tank from an old water softener to build his own "radial" honey extractor. He says the home-built unit is more than adequate for his 12-hive operation. "To tell you the truth, this may be the only thing I've ever made myself that works perfectly. A store-bought one couldn't work any better," he says. "It's great for a small beekeeper." The open-topped plastic tank has a capacity of roughly 30 gallons. Houser plugged the overflow hole partway up the tank, and then added a honey-draining hole at bottom. Next, he built a rack to hold six shallow frames of honeycomb. This rack sits in the tank during the extraction process, and frames can be removed and added as needed. When it's time for clean-up, it can be completely removed from the tank. The rack consists of a circular 1/16-in. steel base with a 1/2-in. steel rod standing vertically in the center. Welded to the top of the center rod, are steel spokes that are actually bolts that came out of electric motors. These need to be about 8in. long, according to Houser, and they are welded to a washer that's welded on the vertical center post. The bolts are threaded on the outer end and slide through holes in a round band. This band can be made out of anything that can be bent in a circle (plastic, metal or composite wood). The bolts are secured to the band with washers and nuts on both sides of the band. This allows for whatever adjustments are necessary to keep the band as perfectly round as possible. "The band keeps the frames in place as they spin, and it has to be very round. Otherwise, it will throw the extractor out of balance." To further secure the wooden honeycomb frames, Houser cut small rectangular holes in the base of the rack, big enough for the frames' corner protrusion to rest in. Between the spokes at the top, a U-shaped metal bar is bolted on. The wooden frames slide down inside the U-shape, and hook into the base's holes. To allow the rack to spin inside the tank, Houser made a bearing from a block of hardwood and bolted it in the bottom center of tank with four bolts. Across the top, he installed another wooden bearing, held there with two wing nuts. The rack's center rod comes up through a hole in the middle of tank's top wooden bearing, and this protruding rod is what Houser slides his 1/2-in. variable speed electric drill onto. "The drill has to be variable speed because you can't spin the rack at the same speed all the time or it gets out of balance," he says. "If you spin it too fast to start with, you would throw the comb out. When you get almost all the honey out of the comb, then you can speed it up without damaging the comb. "The project didn't cost me anything, since I just used scraps and I already had the drill for other purposes. You could make one of these extractors in a couple of days, easy. I've used it for six years already with no problems, and I've extracted up to 700 to 800 pounds of honey with it at one time." Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Duane Houser, 5625 County Rd. 22, Butler, Ind. 46721 (ph 260 868-5259).

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