Note: This is Fred, my young friend and helper. He is working my antique extractor that I bought from my own beekeeping mentor Mike. Read about Fred and my adventures in my logbook sections.

Here is a FRIGHTENING LETTER I received by Email. This poor Fellow needed a fast reply. With hind site THIS is a humorous story, but I feel sorry for the poor bees spinning at about 8 G's in the Extractor :) Just one more quick note, remove all your bees from the frames before you uncap the cells - sounds silly??? Read on.

Dear Beemaster;

I'm a real novice, having kept hives only 2 years.  You mentioned in your newsletter, to suggest subjects that would be helpful in one of your newsletters or logbook. 

The most difficult thing for me has been unloading the honey from the frames. I seem to be all thumbs.  I have the hand cranked centrifuge etc. but literally thousands of bees get killed in the process as I scrape then away while uncapping then spinning the frames and they keep clogging up my drain valve in my extractor. A "HOW TO" with pictures would be most helpful, cause I know there must be a better way.

Below is my reply to him. This should help some people, who have never used a hand operated centrifugal extractor before. These simple techniques work well for me.

To Novice with Bees spinning out of control:
I use a hand powered 2 frame centrifugal extractor myself. You CAN use it properly without damaging bees or the delicate wax foundation in the frames. 

When you remove your frames from the hive, first use a soft brush to remove most of the bees and do it over the open hive so that most of the bees fall back in to the hive. Then place the "bee free" frames away into an empty super for easy carrying or stand them up against something. 

As night falls the stragglers will fly home, leaving you with no bees on your frames and then the frames can be uncapped by scrapping off the outer cappings to expose the honey using an uncapping knife or similar tool. I like to use a cake spatula heated with a small propane torch, this simple combo allows me to control the heat and minimize the need for electrical cables, but any manor that exposes the honey cells will do. Tools for this are not cheap, electrical uncapping knives can set you back a hundred bucks. They are convenient and they work really good, but the beekeeper with one or two hives will not get their moneys worth out of in for many seasons.

Remove the wax capping into a container and place the uncapped frames directly into the spinner. To reduce the mess of having honey every where, only uncap the frames you plan to spin. Note that honey gets on everything and it's a mess to clean up. Keeping your uncapping area small helps keep the mess down.

NOTE: different frames weigh varying amounts, some are as much as 6 POUNDS heavier than the other. Try to get TWO FRAMES that are equally heavy so that they will balance in the spinner. Frames of different weight will bounce around like a washing machine out of balance and be near impossible for one person to spin.

Place the frames in the spinner ands start turning slowly, building up speed, just until you see fine threads of honey flying on to the inside walls of the extractor. This is about the speed you'll need to maintain with a full frame. Continue turning the handle, but only try to spin out about 1/3 rd of the honey from this first side. 

You need to keep in mind that frames are delicate and over spinning can BLOWOUT the wax and destroy the delicate comb. Mind you, the bees can fix this comb usually, but it is labor intensive and totally unnecessary. 

After removing 1/3rd of the honey from the first side, turn the frames around so that the sides that spun out are now facing toward the center of the spinner. Do this so the other side can get some honey out too. 

Again slowly build up speed, tossing about 2/3rds of the honey out this time and again, turn the frames around. This time spin out all the contents, but DON'T over crank or the wax could crack and blow apart. Finally, rotate the frames one last time and spin until empty. If you hold this frame up to the sun or a bright light it should now appear empty and it will feel extremely light.

You can now return these frames to the hive for use in the honey box or brood box. Then scrap the walls of the extractor with a rubber spatula and open the drain valve to let the honey flow into containers. 

You can let the honey naturally settle and any wax will float to the top in a few days. Clean your extractor good, cover with a tight fitting plastic bag and keep it where it will be away from any chemicals, fuels or pesticides.