newbie needs advice on extracting honey

[beeprice]

I have one hive.  I might get one more but I'll probably never have more than two.  Do I need an extractor or can I use the wire screen over a drip pan method?  Will the foundation get clean enough to reuse if I use the drip pan method?  How warm does the room need to be for the honey to drip out in a reasonable time.  Also, is it feasible to use a scratcher to open the cells rather than a heated knife?
Thanks is advance.

[Michael Bush]

>I have one hive.  I might get one more but I'll probably never have more than two.  Do I need an extractor

No.

"Time after time I have seen novice beekeepers, as soon as they had built their apiaries up to a half dozen or so hives, begin to look around for an extractor. It is as if one were to establish a small garden by the kitchen door, and then at once begin looking for a tractor to till it with. Unless then, you have, or plan eventually to have, perhaps fifty or more colonies of bees, you should try to resist looking in bee catalogs at the extractors and other enchanting and tempting tools that are offered and instead look with renewed fondness at your little pocket knife, so symbolic of the simplicity that is the mark of every truly good life."  --Richard Taylor, The Comb Honey Book

> or can I use the wire screen over a drip pan method?

I've never gotten it to work.

> Will the foundation get clean enough to reuse if I use the drip pan method?

If you can get it to drip out.  I never had any luck with it.

> How warm does the room need to be for the honey to drip out in a reasonable time.

180 F.  :)  Then the wax will melt.

>  Also, is it feasible to use a scratcher to open the cells rather than a heated knife?

Sure. But it still won't come out unless you crush the comb or you extract it.

You can make comb honey or you can crush and strain.  Both are simple.

"A comb honey beekeeper really needs, in addition to his bees and the usual apiary equipment and tools, only one other thing, and that is a pocket knife. The day you go into producing extracted honey, on the other hand, you must begin to think not only of an extractor, which is a costly machine used only a relatively minute part of the year, but also of uncapping equipment, strainers, settling tanks, wax melters, bottle filling equipment, pails and utensils galore and endless things. Besides this you must have a place to store supers of combs, subject to damage by moths and rodents and, given the nature of beeswax, very subject to destruction by fire. And still more: You must begin to think in terms of a whole new building, namely, a honey house, suitably constructed, supplied with power, and equipped...." --Richard Taylor, The Comb Honey Book

Here's more on crush and strain and the cost of making wax:
http://www.bushfarms.com/beesharvest.htm

[Ivan]

Find a local beekeeper and he will extract it for you or let you borrow his extractor.

[beeprice]

Thanks Michael...what size are those holes you're drilling in the bucket...'bout one half inch?

[Stingtarget]

Talk with local beekeepers or your County Extension Office.  They may know of a bee club you can join and from there you can find an extractor.  I rent one from our bee club.  $10.00 donation to the club for the rent of the extractor, buckets, double sieve, uncaping tank, and capping knife.  Only problem is the schedule.  Everyone wants to extract within a few weeks of each other and just before the local Apple Festival.

[Michael Bush]

>Thanks Michael...what size are those holes you're drilling in the bucket...'bout one half inch?

Those are about a half an inch.  You could go smaller with more of them and skip having a screen for it.  :)