Can you explain to me how to use the Bee Honeybee extractor. I have looked online but I can't find anything. I would love to purchase it, but I have no idea how to use it
The Honey Bee (Or any of the butane extractors on the market) is very easy to use. One important point to make is that the extractions should always be carried out outside with good ventilation - butane is highly flamable and there have been a numbre of documented cases of people seriously injuring themselves when extracting oils from plants using butane - done properly its very straightforward and relatively safe.
You collect flowers / leaves / dried plant material from you favorite herb or plant - the material should be dry as possible and ground up as fine as possible. If you use leaf etc the quality of the oil you get from the extractor is a lot lower. If you use top end flowers the quality of the oil is much higher. You use butane to pull the essential oils from your herbs or flowers.
The extractor works by a process of polar extraction - You basically stuff the extractor as tight as possible full of dried plant material (the better quality the material the better the end result). You then use pure refined butane (any butane will do the job but as the resulting oil is often taken internally its best to use the highest grade possible - you can find 99.9% pure filtered butane online (I don't sell the butane as too much hassle to ship with handling restrictions etc). You empty a can or a couple of cans of butane through the extractor and leave it to come out into a pyrex or silicone non stick / scratch dish or bowl. The resulting liquid butane is then evaporated leaving you with a sticky honey oil that contains much of the essential nature of the stock material and some of the terpenes etc.
The honey bee is quite a basic model and some people don't like it as its plastic (although it is a made of a special type of no-corrosive plastic designed for butane). There is a glass model available which is much bigger and I also have a range of higher end units (Dexso one use Di-methyl-Ether as the polar solvent to perform to the extraction). I have re-circulating / closed loop systems available also and stock a range of silicone products for storage and handling of the oil.
An additional step taken by many is to use a vaccuum oven to 'purge' the extract (providing you do the evaporating step correctly and make sure there are no tiny bubbles left in the extract it may or may not be neccesary but a vacuum oven makes sure that all butane is expelled from the extract by forcing it out under pressure)
The resulting oil depends on the type of herb and the techniques you use but can range from thick dark waxy brown to a beautiful clear amber honey colour. eg.
