Purchasing a extractor

[tejas]

I’m about to purchase an extractor and was thinking about buying the Italian extractor that betterbee sells. Does anyone own this same extractor and if so how do you like it, would you buy it again? I will probably end up with around 6 hives and trying to decide if I should just go ahead and spend the extra 150 or so dollars and get the Maxant 3100. Any help would be appreciated.

[beesharp]

I'm not sure exactly which model you mean, but I'm very pleased with mine.

http://www.sunshinehoney.com/honey/pages/extract.html

Jim

[amymcg]

I actually just bought that Italian extractor, but used.  It looks nice, it has a built in filtering tank on the bottom, so if you are a small harvest person, you can extract, filter and bottle all from the same unit.  It spins nicely.

[tejas]

Amy,

You have the one I'm looking at with the built in filtering tank. So does it seem pretty well built? Do you think it would be adequate for 5-6 hives?

[amymcg]

Yes, that's the one.  

I think if you are going to extract them all at once, then I would load them into buckets to settle before bottling. I don't think the bottom would hold honey from 5-6 hives all at once.  If you did them on different days, that's another story.

It looks very well constructed.  The top lids are plastic though, so keep that in mind.

The good thing is, they tend to hold their value and they are good enough for a beginner to get started, so if you wanted to upgrade later,  you would get most of your money back out of it.