Online Classifieds garner high visibility, and can be revised or withdrawn during their cycle, should, for example the item sell or the price changes. If a Classifed Ad request is received after the OBJ submission deadline, it will only appear online for that cycle. In addition, if received by the deadline (below), the ad will be printed in the classified section of the Ontario Bee Journal, unless directed otherwise. There is nothing wrong with upgrading as you go.Classified Ads appear for a 2-month cycle on the OBA website. If I were in your shoes, getting a different uncapping knife would be the biggest change I would be looking at. (But it is a trade-off for the available space I have for extraction right now, and the desire for an extractor that gets done faster.) I ran about 20 hives for honey production this year, and wished I had a bigger extractor when I started pulling honey. This year, I bought a 9/18 Mann Lake motorized extractor. ![]() It was way too slow for more than 2 or 3 hives. I started out with a 3 frame tangential extractor. If you start bottling much cold honey from a 5 gallon bucket, I suspect you will start thinking about how fast a heated bottling tank would pay for itself. Then, I would let the honey settle for a couple days before I would bottle it. The honey pours out the uncapping tank, through the double strainer and into a 5 gallon bucket. I would not try to bottle honey from the uncapping tank. I would also recommend getting a double strainer and a 5 gallon bucket with a honey gate for small scale bottling. My first year in beekeeping I bought an electric hot knife, and as soon as I tried a bread knife, I never used the hot knife again. My advice would be to sell the electric uncapping knife and get a nice serrated bread knife. I don't have any all-plastic frames, but I'm picking up some Permacomb and that might make a difference. Thanks for the tip on getting BM to alter the basket before they send it out. I plan on trying a few TBHs next season, and while I love comb, I can't eat 5 hives' worth, so radial baskets and hand-cranks are important to me. I only have medium frames in all my equipment, and have no reason to get a larger extractor. Dropping a grand or more for a super high quality motorized extractor is a little out of my budget right now, especially when I still need all the rest of the tools. ![]() So growing, yes, but not too fast and not TOO big. Win or lose, I have another nuc and 5 packages on order for next spring, and will likely try splitting and swarm catching. Right now I have 5 hives/nucs, and have never overwintered ANY, so who knows how many I'll have come spring. ![]() I think I'll eventually get to the 'large hobby/small business' stage, maybe about 30-50 hives, and even then not all will be for honey production. If I ever get to the point that my bees have brought in enough to pay for an upgrade, I'll certainly look at something a little more rugged. I'll probably go with this extractor for now, since the people who have used it all seem happy with it. Thanks all for the input! I appreciate the different views. This can be an expensive hobby and it doesn't have to made more so. So spend your money unnecessarily on higher-priced products if you want. The darned Jaguar wouldn't start at all if there was even a hint of rain. If you're into comparing cars, the Pintos I drove in the past started every time and got me where I wanted to go. ![]() If resale value is a concern, how many extractors do you see endlessly sitting on Craigslist, ebay or in the for sale section here waiting for someone to buy them? They go quickly and while I wouldn't expect to make back every penny I paid for my little plastic job, or the 9 frame Brushy Mountain one, I doubt very much that I would be guaranteed to recoup my outlay if I bought a Maxant. I don't buy for a minute the notion that I need to pay more now to buy bigger or better or anything else that I don't need. It did the trick for me and next year, I'll probably be upgrading to the 9 frame (with motor) that Tara linked to. For the little honey I needed to extract, I bought the cheapest of plastic extractors for a little over a hundred bucks. I'm a couple of years away from needing a commercial-grade extractor since I am in the process of increasing colonies at the expense of a honey crop.
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