Comb honey

[Aquila]

Hello everybody.

I’d like to try to make comb honey. I have seen some different systems on market.

Who can share an experience which is better to use and how?

Thanks

[lakeman]

Hello everybody.

I’d like to try to make comb honey. I have seen some different systems on market.

Who can share an experience which is better to use and how?

Thanks

Yes, this beginner is curious also, lets hear it. I have just harvested my first honey, I recently removed one frame of comb, and replaced it with a new frame, boy does it taste good.

[Brian D. Bray]

Hello everybody.

I’d like to try to make comb honey. I have seen some different systems on market.

Who can share an experience which is better to use and how?

Thanks

I've used the old Bass wood style years ago, not abt if the newer Ross Rounds or the plastic snap together units or other systems.  Having done comb honey I can say, without reservation, that regardless of the comb honey system used the secret to comb honey production is lots of bees.  Producing comb honey results in a high swarm rate and to get the comb honey it is necessary to recombine the swarm with the parent hive, immediately. 

Put on more than one comb honey super at a time and crowd the bees as much or more than they can stand.  Out of a super of comb honey the saleable quality of comb honey will be near 50%, anything over 60% is really good. 

I've known beekeepers who got up to 80% saleable comb honey from a super but they also fed sugar syrup heavily to get that perfect white comb, kind of defeats the purpose of calling it honey.

It is an experience every beekeeper should experience at least once and most, like me, limited their experience to how long it took to use up all the comb honey sections, they then converted the boxes to shallow super by adding a 1/2 inch shim to the bottom.

[DennisB]

I have found that the easiest way for me to make comb honey is to place frames with no foundation in between drawn out frames in a honey super. I usually will add a couple or three per super. These will be in the first super that goes on since they fill it first. Then I pull it first. I sometimes don't get the perfect white dry cappings but it works well for me. Then just use a sharp knife to cut them out of the frame and place in the box.

Dennis

[Michael Bush]

I agree.  Cut comb from foundationless is the simplest.

[luvin honey]

Producing comb honey results in a high swarm rate and to get the comb honey it is necessary to recombine the swarm with the parent hive, immediately. 

Brian--Could you please explain this? Is it that the bees need to be really crowded to really fill out the frames?

I had the wonderful and lucky experience of harvesting honeycomb from my topbar hive that was really getting croweded. Two bars had been brood before and so got the old crush and strain. Two were absolutely gorgeous and were devoured quite quickly :D