# Charging for honey extraction



## RichardsonTX (Jul 3, 2011)

I think this is an excellent idea. There are bunches of beekeepers out there who produce more honey than they know what to do with. 

I have a friend who I helped get a used Dakota Gunness uncapper this year to help upgrade his honey house. Since adding capacity is kind of a stair stepping operation, this puts him in a position to have a lot more extra capacity and be able to provide a service to beekeepers who don't want to extract their own honey for whatever reason and would like to use an extracting service. It's kind of like a meat processing operation though where keeping things separated to meet everyone's needs, keeping it systematic, and managing volume in such a way to keep it efficient, is a difficult system to work out when you haven't done it before. As another source of revenue, he's also going to store, bottle, and wholesale honey to retailers from hobby beekeeper's on a consignment basis. This keeps the honey being utilized more months out of the year. 

If anyone else who is doing this would like to provide some advice on these types of services I'd sure like to hear them so that I can pass on the info to my friend.


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## Allen (Oct 5, 2011)

Thanks for the input. 
How about one dollar a pound for extracted honey?


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## MTN-Bees (Jan 27, 2014)

I have seen prices from .16 to $3.00 a pound for extraction.


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## cervus (May 8, 2016)

There is a guy here that just keeps the cappings honey. He gets a LOT of honey from the cappings for resell.


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## Brian Suchan (Apr 6, 2005)

Wow I get .15lb, apparently I'm on the low side. But are we talking about a couple supers here and there or 20-25 drums?


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## jean-marc (Jan 13, 2005)

This sounds like a few supers. To be blunt Canadians are being offered 1.10 or I even heard lee by American packers. It does not leave a lot if you are paying a dollar to have it extracted.

I guess price depends strictly on capacity. If the custom extractor can have his crew do 800 boxes a day ... 30 pounds a box ... 24 000 pounds then fifteen cents is a price I would pay... no problems. I would even pay twenty five cents ... not a dollar.

If I were the fellow doing the extracting, with a machine that cannot accomodate deep frames, to people that might only be bringing a few hundred pounds, and I could only extract 150- 250 pounds a day, then I would want to have a dollar a pound.

If he offers the service there will be some people that will want him to do it. I would suggest a full service place... extract the honey for x a mount then bottle it for x amount. Have the honey bottled in 1 and 2 pound jars ... maybe a hexaonal jar and another type... so people have a choice... but not so many as to have to carry a whole bunch of inventory. Some people will want that. All they then have to do is put on their label. That too could be done, for a fee. The U-Brew places come to mind.

Jean-Marc


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## Ian (Jan 16, 2003)

Allen said:


> I've got a friend who has an inspected honey house and wants to start offering a honey extracting service.
> Any ideas on how to charge for something like that?
> 
> His extractor doesn't hold a full super of deeps but it will hold a full super of mediums and shallows.
> ...


I charge $.20 per lbs, my wax
If there is enough, I let the customer run his crew on a Saturday, my supervision, and they keep all their honey and wax


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

In my limited experience....the misery factor in the aftermath cancels everything else out. I hardly have time to do my own....and the cleanup and repairs following the work of others takes even longer than the extraction.
Just my experience.


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## Ian (Jan 16, 2003)

beemandan said:


> In my limited experience....the misery factor in the aftermath cancels everything else out. I hardly have time to do my own....and the cleanup and repairs following the work of others takes even longer than the extraction.
> Just my experience.


Lol , ya
Real problems come with non standardized equipment. Custom extraction is a hassle but remember,... It's CASH. Grab it any way you can!


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## Oldtimer (Jul 4, 2010)

Per pound doesn't work, because a person can bring a bunch of 1/2 empty boxes, ='s the extractor has to do a lot of work to get a few pounds.

Over here commercials extracting for other small commercials who do not have a plant is getting more and more common, rates seem to have standardised for now at NZ $1.50 per frame, which is US $1.10 per frame. A per frame rate encourages people not to bring in a bunch of near empty frames, as would happen if it was per pound. The person having the honey extracted also pays all testing and legal requirements.

A lot of NZ honey is thyxotrophic and is more labor and machinery intensive to extract than US honeys.


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## rainesridgefarm (Sep 4, 2001)

be careful this was done in the Chicago are market and AFB was spread all over because they never washed the uncapper or extractor between runs.


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## zhiv9 (Aug 3, 2012)

rainesridgefarm said:


> be careful this was done in the Chicago are market and AFB was spread all over because they never washed the uncapper or extractor between runs.


Really? Have any links to this story? While theoretically possible to spread AFB this way it seems highly unlikely.


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## Woodside (Aug 10, 2010)

around here it is 1/10 barrels


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## rainesridgefarm (Sep 4, 2001)

I could PM you about 40 beekeepers you can call and listen to them ***** about it if you want.


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## sakhoney (Apr 3, 2016)

25% of the honey and I keep the wax - whats ezer than that - you have 4 bbls I keep 1


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## Clairesmom (Jun 6, 2012)

Our club charges .30/pound plus cappings. For hobbyists only, not for commercial operations.

Not sure it would be worth it as a commercial venture, but some folks (non-members) don't have the equipment and/or the desire to do their own.

edited- oops, sorry. This post popped up on the New Posts list, did not realize that it was in the commercial area.


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## Allen (Oct 5, 2011)

I was incorrect on the extractor not handling a full deep super and this is for hobbyists only.
Taking a cut of honey is interesting.


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## heaflaw (Feb 26, 2007)

Oldtimer said:


> A lot of NZ honey is thyxotrophic and is more labor and machinery intensive to extract than US honeys.


What is thyxotrophic honey?


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## Rader Sidetrack (Nov 30, 2011)

>> What is thyxotrophic honey?

Here is one explanation from an earlier thread ...



samak said:


> Here is the quote from "The beekeepers handbook" by Diana Sammato and Alphonse Avitabile
> http://www.amazon.com/Beekeepers-Ha...=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1233514932&sr=1-1
> 
> "A few rare honeys have thixotropic characteristics. A single, particular plant protein imparts this unique property to the honey. In the comb, the honey appears to be solid but cannot be extracted because of its thick, viscous nature. The honey will liquefy, however, if it is subjected to vibration with a special type of extractor or as it is being spread on bread. As soon as the vibration stops, the honey reverts back to a thick, gel-like solid. The most famous thixotropic honey is from ling or heather (Calluna vulgaris), a plant commonly found growing on the moors of Europe. Another is pure grapefruit (Citrus paradisi) honey."



[hr] [/hr]
A reminder ... the blue *>>* in quote boxes (such as above) is a clickable link to the thread/post where the quote originated.


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## Oldtimer (Jul 4, 2010)

Manuka is a thixotrophic honey, which means it turns into jelly in the comb and will not extract. So it has to be "pricked" as per the linked video at 1.20.

Unfortunately I could not find a video of a good pricker, the one shown is pretty basic. The best prickers drop the combs through 2 plates that stick vibrating needles into each cell to break up the gel, and prior uncapping the comb is not needed as the pricker does that also.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_aqJerzCw0


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## Richard Cryberg (May 24, 2013)

heaflaw said:


> What is thyxotrophic honey?


Quite a few materials behave as solids under low shear conditions. For example ketchup or mayonnaise. At very low shear such materials will not flow which is why when you invert a ketchup bottle the stuff does not run out. Under shear such materials behave as liquids and have much lower viscosity and flow with ease. When you shear such materials and then stop shearing they remain in a liquid state for various lengths of time from small fractions of a second up to several seconds. A lump of clay is another good example. Just laying there it remains in a pile that does not move under the force of gravity. But push on it and it flows with ease which is what allows a potter to form it on a potters wheel. Gold and silver are also examples of such materials but require much higher forces to move them and do not work harden when moved unlike most metals which do work harden. Substances that shear thin reversibly are called thixotropic materials.


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## heaflaw (Feb 26, 2007)

very interesting


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## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

MTN-Bees said:


> I have seen prices from .16 to $3.00 a pound for extraction.


$3.00/lb for extracting? That's insane. Barrel honey is being sold for $2.00 and less.


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## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

beemandan said:


> In my limited experience....the misery factor in the aftermath cancels everything else out. I hardly have time to do my own....and the cleanup and repairs following the work of others takes even longer than the extraction.
> Just my experience.


But the original post is about a hobby beekeeper offering a service to other hobby beekeepers. Not any kind of commercial operation, like yours.


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## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

zhiv9 said:


> Really? Have any links to this story? While theoretically possible to spread AFB this way it seems highly unlikely.


Highly unlikely. Because the honey is coming off of the frames. How do frames get contaminated? I have heard this for ages and it doesn't make sense to me.

More likely that frames from infected colonies were extracted and put into many supers and spread throughout an operation.


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## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

When I first started paying for extraction the price was 15 cents per lb. Along the way it inched up to 25 cents. After my current extractor had been extracting for me for about 4 years I gave him a raise to 30 cents a lb, $18.00 per bucket.

The first guy who extracted for me ran 1,000 hives of his own, extracted for me and a number of others annually. He thought it paid well enough to make it worth his trouble. If I brought in less than full boxes of honey he let me know not to anymore. I have always sorted combs. Never see any benefit to taking empty comb to be extracted. You can't get any honey out of empty comb.

I have been paying for extraction for 20 years. I like not having to own the extracting equipment. I like someone else extracting for me. It's worth it to me.


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## Oldtimer (Jul 4, 2010)

sqkcrk said:


> More likely that frames from infected colonies were extracted and put into many supers and spread throughout an operation.


That.


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## DavidZ (Apr 9, 2016)

my first time extracting 100 frames, I found a person through craigslist...
all he had me do is help him extract his 3500+ frames
it was a great learning experience, and allot of sticky hot and hard work.
plus he gave me his old hand crank 1970's extractor for helping that year.
fun times
found another person this year through CL, and they extracted 40 large frames
for me, and it cost me a quart of blackberry.


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## Jdt0517 (Aug 23, 2015)

Allen here is a website I stumbled upon one day. Hope this helps!! http://thehoneyexchange.com/pages/honey-extraction-services


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## bucksbees (May 19, 2015)

Started a conversation with an officer from our state bee assocation last night during the meeting. I mentioned that since they list members that do swarm removals, and since they also list those that sale honey, why not a list of certifed honey houses that people were willing to rent out. That way hobbist and sideliners could have more options to sale, and the equipment owners could recoup some of the cost. Most of the folks at the bee meeting liked the idea, and the officer said that no one had mentioned it before, and was going to submit it and try to get it approved to go live on the website before next year.

Also mentioned was why not a state coop for honey only made/produced in the state, folks seemed to like that idea as well.

Moral of the story, even a blind pig can find a nut to eat, but not all nuts are good ones.


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## becsbeehive (Oct 29, 2016)

Manuka is the best


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