Tavery
I made a home made four medium frame extractor. I run all mediums. I have a sewing machine motor on it. This year was my very first year to extract. I would proby have bought one of the cheep ebay motorized one or just crush and strain if I had not had all the parts to laying around being unused. I think with the price of stuff you could not make one as cheep as you can buy one of the cheep chineese ones if you had to buy anything to make one. You have quite a few more hives then me at 60 and might need a little more quality then a chineese made extractor. I only started with three that over wintered. So far I have only ended up with about 4 gal because of swarming. I am foundationless and did blow out two combs while extracting but over all think it went pretty well. Over all, I am pleased with the homemade extractor though I am thinking of adding wheels to it so it is easier to move.
I don't know if it has been a good year where I am or not cause I am too new. It seems to me like there might still be a flow on where I am. We just got a good rain the day before yesterday and the hives look active at the entrances. I am sitting on eight now if they gain enough weight to winter on and I gave one massive swarm away from one of my hives.
I am still trying to figure out how to handle space and have the correct amount of stores where they need to be by october but yet pull what honey I can. I am going to add two more mediums tommorrow to two young hives. I wintered my hives last winter with two of the hives not having two full mediums each cause that is what they had built to. I have a couple this year that will probly end up that way this year.
Do you think your flow is over untill sept?
Cheers
gww
Ps I just saw a vidio that was posted on a differrent sight where a guy bought a cheep chineese stainless steel sink that was the perfect size for lang frames to rest on inside the sink and he was putting a colender type strainer at the drain hole and letting the honey drain into a 5 gal bucket. He was going to cap over the sink and than hang the frames in the sink while the extractor was running. I think this is the vidio.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkCB46jjsBk