>And I was told by my local supplier that foundationless frames would fly apart in an extractor. Thank you for clearing that up for me.
Any frames will fly apart in an extractor if you uncap heavy new comb and crank it all the way up right off the bat. Any combs can be extracted if you start gently and work your way up. It's no more difficult to extract a foundationless frame than a wired wax foundation frame. Plastic is a bit stronger but even that can blow out if you get carried away.
>So if I had mind to use the comb for wax products, (soap, candles, etc), would crush and strain be a viable method in extracting my honey and have these resources strained and ready to use?
If you want wax, then I would do crush and strain to maximize the wax. If you want honey and have access to an extractor, I would extract. If you have to buy an extractor and you have less than a dozen hives, I would do crush and strain unless you can find a cheap used extractor.
>Honestly, I don't want to have to buy different frames, an extractor, uncapper/station, etc if I can just extract all my honey through one method and use the wax.
Then I would do crush and strain.
>The less I can spend on extraneous equipment the more I can plow back into my bees. Is it better for the bees if I uncap and extract, returning comb back to them that they can clean up and reuse? Thank you for your time.
http://www.bushfarms.com/beesharvest.htm
"A comb honey beekeeper really needs, in addition to his bees and the usual apiary equipment and tools, only one other thing, and that is a pocket knife. The day you go into producing extracted honey, on the other hand, you must begin to think not only of an extractor, which is a costly machine used only a relatively minute part of the year, but also of uncapping equipment, strainers, settling tanks, wax melters, bottle filling equipment, pails and utensils galore and endless things. Besides this you must have a place to store supers of combs, subject to damage by moths and rodents and, given the nature of beeswax, very subject to destruction by fire. And still more: You must begin to think in terms of a whole new building, namely, a honey house, suitably constructed, supplied with power, and equipped....
"All this seems obvious enough, and yet time after time I have seen novice beekeepers, as soon as they had built their apiaries up to a half dozen or so hives, begin to look around for an extractor. It is as if one were to establish a small garden by the kitchen door, and then at once begin looking for a tractor to till it with. Unless then, you have, or plan eventually to have, perhaps fifty or more colonies of bees, you should try to resist looking in bee catalogs at the extractors and other enchanting and tempting tools that are offered and instead look with renewed fondness at your little pocket knife, so symbolic of the simplicity that is the mark of every truly good life..."
"The opinion of experts once was that the production of beeswax in a colony required great quantities of nectar which, since it was turned into wax, would never be turned into honey. Until quite recently it was thought that bees could store seven pounds of honey for every pound of beeswax that they needed to manufacture for the construction of their combs--a figure which seems never to have been given any scientific basis, and which is in any case quite certainly wrong. The widespread view that if the combs were used over and over, through the use of the honey extractor, then the bees would be saved the trouble of building them and could convert the nectar thus saved into honey, was only minimally correct. A strong colony of bees will make almost as much comb honey as extracted honey on a strong honey flow. The advantage of the extractor, in increasing harvests, is that honey stored from minor flows, or gathered by the bees over many weeks of the summer, can easily be extracted, but comb honey cannot be easily produced under those conditions."--Richard Taylor, The Comb Honey Book