Archive for October, 2011

Do It Yourself Honey Extractor

Sunday, October 16th, 2011

I cleaned out a camera and I found the pictures that I took while building the basket for my do-it-yourself honey extractor.

It is made of two pizza pie pans held together with threaded rod. The holes in the top are now bigger because I had to do a few deep frames when I had a hive collapse. I have added springs to hold the frames steady inside the basket. I have cut off the top of the central rod to make it shorter as I bent the rod when I had an accident with the drill.

I filed off the top of the rod square to make it easier to grab with the drill. The drill is the cheapest Craftsman variable speed drill that they had. I spin the frames one side at a time after opening the caps with a fork. (A simple table fork worked better than the expensive hot knife.)  I start slowly and work up to a decent speed. It takes about a minute or so to completely dry out the frames. I then flip them and the second side takes even less time because the frames are lighter.

The garbage can with its strike plate and the pipe to hold the basket in place are in an older post.

My earlier attempt at a basket self destructed after one use. I just noticed that the basket shows the long rods at the bottom of the basket. Cut the excess off. Use Nylon tie wraps or galvanized wire to weave around the basket so the frames don’t slide out.

Click on the slide show to see the larger images.

Honey Spinner

Saturday, October 15th, 2011

The drill that I use to spin the honey went nuts and my home made honey spinner is a little knocked around. The drill got stuck “on” and the cord wrapped around the shaft bending it. Notice that the 3/8 inch shaft is bent. If I did this again, I would use 1/2 inch threaded rod and make the shaft shorter on the top. The long shaft makes it easy to bend.

The spinner is made from two 17 inch aluminum pizza pie plates with threaded rod holding them about 2 feet apart. I used galvanized wire to keep the frames in, but as you see the wire breaks. There are 4 galvanized springs that hold the frames in place. I can do 4 deep frames at a time. I have to flip then to the other side. It only takes a minute to spin out all the honey using a drill to drive it. I have a small pipe in the bottom of a trash can to hold it in place while it spins. I can spin about 50 pounds before I have to empty some honey.

 

October Honey

Wednesday, October 12th, 2011

The hives are very low on honey all of a sudden. I robbed Fanny and got only 15 pounds of honey. The rest of the hives are very low and the weakest hive died.

I was not paying close attention to one of my weak hives. I assumed that it was putting something away, but last week the hive just collapsed due to starvation. I should have paid closer attention. This hive never made comb and never put away honey, but it had a fairly large population. I am saddened by the loss of this hive and the time and money I put into it. I could have fed it sugar, but I don’t think it would have made it through the winter.

I will be feeding the other hives, now. The late summer was great and the bees really increased. September was deadly, though. I watched the bees coming in with pollen and I thought that they were OK. I was wrong.

A month ago I checked the supers on the new hives and they were full. When I went to harvest, the comb was empty for the most part.

I have to take the supers off of the rest of the hives and feed them. It is dark when I get home and it is just getting light when I get in the car in the morning so I have to do this on the weekend. I will feed them as much as they will take between now and the end of the month. I’ll check to see if they have put away enough honey for the winter, then. If not, I will feed them on warm days.

I want to take the top feeders off by Thanksgiving and spend that weekend wrapping the hives with roofing paper for the winter.