Beemaster's International Beekeeping Forum
BEEKEEPING LEARNING CENTER => GENERAL BEEKEEPING - MAIN POSTING FORUM. => Topic started by: Stung on October 13, 2020, 05:21:08 pm
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I have a 4/8 frame crank extractor. It has always been hard to use. It vibrates horrible, and moves all around. I have to be leaning on top of it. Are electric ones better. I am getting to old for this crap.
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LoL
An electric one will vibrate and walk around just as much, if not worse. Bolting the extractor down to the floor is step 1. Balancing the load is step 2.
What electric does for you is speed control and frees up the hands. An unbalanced load can be started up and set on low speed to reduce vibration while the loads in the frames even out as the honey comes out. As the heavier frames empty, higher speeds can be set incrementally. Electric also allows you to do something else while the extractor is running. Such as getting the next pail ready, uncapping the next load of frames, cleaning up boxes, etc.
On 4 frames or less, I certainly would not bother with electric. Just not worth the cost or the minimal time savings. Just bolt it down. If your shoulders are sore, take the hand crank off the shaft and attach a variable speed drill. When stepping up into the 12+ frame range electric drive becomes a must have.
Hope that helps!
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Electric is much better but not any less wobbly and shaky... Mostly it's a trick to try to balance the frames. Anything with some pollen should be opposite something with pollen. Plastic and full opposite plastic and full etc.
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Hello. A trick worth trying is fix the extractor to a board with ball castors on it. Although it might be a problem with a hand cranked extractor.
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How does it work with no frames? How does it work with empty frames? I am wondering if you have something not secure in the basket to tank connection (example- bushing gone, wrong size bearing on bottom of shaft, stripped hardware on the top). It is not unusual to have a rough ride from time to time with different frames but you OP does not make it sound that way. It should run the same with full frames or none but with more difficulty getting it started.
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Extractors do not go up in proportion to the number of frames, eg 16 frames is not double the price of a 8 frame.
So unless you know where your bee keeping will be in 5-10 yrs time buy bigger rather than smaller.
Our extractor is bolted to a frame of 6x2 RHS and so adds weight to dampen out some vibration, also not completely draining the extractor between spins adds dampening weight.
Interesting that a 60 hive BK I met runs 8 frame boxes, so he has a 24 frame extractor, 3 boxes per run and the frames are put back into their original box, as a disease barrier. I am unsure how the balancing works with this method, but it is an interesting way of looking at it.