Beeman's Beehut

Well, I’ve used the Speed King uncapping knife in the past and this is a must have for any honey production environment.  It takes a little time to heat up but is well worth it when you have a good 50 frames of honey to harvest.  These thing run about $100 but the only cheaper option would be to get a capping scratch-er.  Basically the way it works is the knife heats up like an iron.  This melts the wax as it cuts to make it a lot easier to uncap the frames before putting them into the extractor.  I would recommend this to anyone.

Back when I did beekeeping I rented a Little Wonder Hand-Extractor from Mr Kelly at the local Dadant and Sons branch.  Its a simple and yet really good quality hand extractor good for anyone who planes on having anywhere from 5-whatever hives.  It has 4 sides where you can put shallow or a deep super frame in it.  To extract using this extractor you must extract one side of the frame half way, then turn the frame over and do the other side completely then come back to the first to complete it.  This helps prevent the comb from braking.  A step up from the Little Wonder is Dadant’s Ranger Extract which can extract both sides of the frame simultaneously from a  6 1/4 super.   They are about a hundred dollars apart on the price and to be hones I’d go with the Little Wonder unless you plan on going a bit bigger with the honey business.

Little wonder image below.