Honey Sections & Cut Comb
Black Friday, Cyber Monday and bee equipment winter sales are all on and I want to grab a bargain … today (ideally).
Some/many beekeepers find honey extraction a big faff and I’m wondering about sectioned honey as a way to save time … and also, because I have a strong childhood memory of once buying sectioned honey and being amazed and fascinated by it. I could create a beautiful product and give others a happy memory too.
I have seen little online discussion around sections and I would greatly appreciate people’s thoughts.
My Questions
- Should I do it?
- Which type (round, square, cut)?
- How should I do it?
Honey Sections – The Challenge
From what I have read I understand there it is difficult to produce honey sections. The conditions you need are:
- Active, busy hive, exploding with bees
- No swarming
- Plenty of forage
I have read that bees are not that keen to draw out sections.
Honey Sections – The Options
Round Sections
I am most attracted to round sections as per below – as they look attractive. Also, the brochures say that bees prefer the round section. You can produce up to 40 sections per super. That’s potentially a lot of value. Material: plastic. Cost £80-£130 for fully assembled, ready to go, rack.
Timber Sections
Hols 32 sections. Square shape. Approximately £50 for fully assembled, ready to go, rack.
Cut Comb
You put unwired thin foundation into super frames. And at end of season you use comb cutter (or dental floss is apparently good). I have read it is easier to produce this type of honey comb. Cost: approx £50 for super and assembled frames with thin foundation.
How To Make Honey Sections
I have based the following from an article on the Ross Rounds website (leading manufacturer of round sections). Top tips seem to be:
- April (UK) – Place super with frames on hive to give them room to expand and lay down honey
- May (UK) – When the first honey flow begins give them a round-section super underneath the extracting super(s) which are already becoming filled. In this position, the bees will start work on it quickly.
- “When all but perhaps the 4 sections at the corners are completely capped, try to harvest them ASAP, so the cappings will be nice and light, for the most attractive package. Then you can place any unfinished sections into the next, newly fitted-out super, towards the centre, and they will be completed for harvesting next time around.”
- Any sections which are only partially filled or finished can be cut and placed into jar of extracted honey.
My Thoughts
- Buy a couple of round section racks – for the feisty, busy colonies?
- Put thin foundation into the other colonies?
Grateful for your thoughts, plus how best to produce honey sections.
Postscript / May 2016
I bought the sections and wrote a post about me assembling the Ross Rounds.
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I started with cut comb a couple of years ago, using wax starter strips and the thornes oblong cutter, yes they look great and it’s a good return on a whole super, approx 50 segments x £6 = £300, but it’s still a little messy, once cut each segment needs to stand for 24hrs to allow the honey from edges to drain off, before putting into the containers, this year I purchased the ross rounds, rather late in the season, it took a while but one hive did start drawing out the wax, although I then removed it in preparation for winter, I think the ross will be the better way to go, totally less mess as it’s removed and packaged all in one go, and a good return can still be had, good luck
I’m having troubles drawing out Ross Rounds. I have set the box on several hives and there seems to be no interest.
Are there any suggestions out there?
and thanks for jogging my memory, I’ve just ordered 2 more complete ross round supers from mann lake saving me £18 in the sale
Thanks Stephen. What is the full kit I need to buy?
1. Does this kit come with the covers/containers? I.e. sections are good to go and I just need to buy foundation and a label?
2. Do I need “Replacement section rings”? I.e. does each section ring stay with the finished product and hence I need replacements?
3. Thin foundation – OK to buy now, or wait till Feb? Also – for Langstroth they sell Ross Rounds thin super foundation but just standard thin foundation for then national. Is this OK? What’s the difference?
4. Labels – obviously
Finally – do the Mann Lake round sections make 8oz or 12oz sections?
1, I think the kit comes with clear top covers, you need to buy opaque bottom covers
2, yes the rings stay with the comb, so you’ll need replacements
3,the ross thin is REALLY THIN, compared to standard thin wax, its more like rice paper, remember you only use 8 sheets per super, so by ordering 4 pkts you can fill the super 5 times
4, yes labels are needed, they do two types/colours if I remember rightly
I took a chance that it’ll all go ok, and order a few hundred inner rings and outer covers of clear and opaque, fingers crossed
Thanks.
1. Did you get any sectioned honey from oil seed rape? What was it like?
2. Where do you get your cases/covers?
Also – I looked at the Ross Rounds website and summarised the salient top tips on how to be successful in making sections in the blog post above.
1, this year I didn’t take any cut comb, bit late in buying the ross round super,
2, I buy all my bits from mann lake, cheapest place out there for ross rounds
they say bursting hives will produce the best results, I aim to use two brood boxes to give the queen plenty of space to lay, and also produce lots of bees, then add the ross round super only
Their brochure says to use the Langstroth Ross Rounds thin super foundation in the National supers. So I bought some of this type. Guess I just trim to size. Boxes have arrived but as ever I am too busy to open them. Another project for Christmas.
Hallo, The wax that is used in foundation is not palatable for humans. We cannot digest it. Also you don’t have any idea what kind of chemicals are in the foundation you have bought unless it is your own or 100% biological quality. If you trea your own bees with formic and or oxalic acid these substances will be in the foundation you use. You cannot give away or sell comb honey with these things in them. The bees need to make their own wax in the rings before they even get to putting honey in them. Rusty Burlew at honeybeesuite.com has a great deal of information on her site regarding all possible methods. Hope this was too much of a deterrant and that it helps you.
you’ll notice on my description/video, foundation strips are used to start the bees off, but are not within the area removed for cut comb, so no worries there, I also do not put any treatments of any description on my bees, so again no worries, the thin wax used in the ross rounds is palatable
We sometimes harvest cut comb. It is a messy business the way we do it but we like the price with our method – free! What we do is:
1) Take a normal frame (we use full depths in our hives) with wire but NO foundation (don’t like the thought of eating foundation unless you make it yourself from what you know is clean wax – then it would have to be very thin).
2) Attach a strip to the top of the frame (we use an old wooden blind) with beeswax (from a homemade candle)that runs across the top bar. This works as a starting guide to get the bees working down from the middle of the frame in a nice line.
3) Install new, totally empty frame into a strong hive in spring, preferably during a flow between 2 well built out frames. This is very important. If you put two empty frames together they’re more likely to build curved comb. Using our method we can get 3 empty frames into an 8 frame box.
4) Harvest whenever it’s required – we had one hive build out 3 frames like this in 3 weeks – empty to fully capped lovely honey.
5) Cut along the wire with a sharp knife and lift out the comb. It’s messy, a lot of honey runs out so do this in a tray (I use an old tray that goes under a dish draining rack).
6) Put the comb into take away boxes, label and try to sell.
7) Odd bits of comb left at the end of the frames and beneath the bottom wire are great to be added to jars of honey which can be sold as chunk honey and fetch a higher price than normal honey.
A few notes:
1) Some hives never ever even bother building comb on the empty frames. It’s a bit of a crap shoot.
2) The comb is normally very straight for 80% of it’s length but often connects to the next frame at the bottom. The leftover bits make more chunk honey (and more mess).
3) Cut comb doesn’t sell nearly as well as normal honey. We figure we sell about 1 box of cut comb for every 10 jars of honey.
4) Anything not harvested the first year probably isn’t any good the next year. The comb gets dark and just doesn’t look as good.
5) Comb honey crystallises just like normal honey. Honey that runs out during the cutting process quite visibly candies. I don’t think this makes an attractive or appetising product (I could be wrong). I only cut when I think I can sell pretty quickly because I don’t like storing cut comb(because of the crystallisation but also it’s simply harder to store).
6) We just harvested 200 kg from our hives and I only cut 2 frames of comb. Those 2 frames would yield 10 kg of honey if extracted normally. They yielded 14 boxes for a total of about 4 kg of cut comb plus some runoff that went into my home honey jar.
7) The way I price honey and comb, the comb actually makes me about $20 more than if I had extracted and sold normal honey. Since it takes a LOT longer to harvest, is very messy, forces the bees to make comb, causes some unruly frame building and bridging comb… it’s not worth it. But that doesn’t stop me from cutting comb every once in a while. It’s fun and unique and we have lots of it because we’re trying to save cost by not buying foundation except for the brood. These frames don’t work in the brood because the bees build large cells when given the chance. If you put this in the brood (we have) you end up with a LOT of drones 🙁
8) Chunk honey sells really well. So well that I wonder if it’s not better just to chunk up a frame to add to any normal honey. The only problem is if/when the honey crystallise – you can no longer see the comb inside and I think it probably isn’t really going to be a good product. So, again, I’d only do this when I’m pretty confident of a quick sale.
Hope this gives you food for thought.
OOPS!!!!!!!! My calculation was wrong. 2 frames gets me 5 kg of honey. I would sell that for about $60. I’d sell the 14 boxes for $140. So the diff is $80 between normal honey and comb honey from the 2 frames. Suddenly it’s seeming worth all that time and mess 🙂 I explained this to my hubby and he said we should make more!
@laura, I suppose whatever way works best for you, but I put a whole super on using all wax starter strips, and they have never built wonky comb, using a small strip of brought in foundation, means they build straight, and when cutting the comb out, I cut under this strip, so comb is 100% built by bees, and the top of frame is ready for them to start building again.
https://youtu.be/UfA75sZOigU
Stephen, it looks to me like you use ideal frames. They’re half the height of what we use. Our super frames are full depth – probably the same as your brood. That’s a long way to keep going on a straight line. Our girls build nice and straight for a while, then the rebel in their soul takes hold. Not always, but often enough to make us alternate built out comb (or frames with foundation) with empty frames.
Maybe it’s just southern hemisphere bees. The rotation of the earth is opposite down here and perhaps it confuses them 🙂
How’d you get a photo in there? I was going to send you one of mine but I don’t see how.
host your pictures or videos on photobucket or youtube, then simple copy and paste the URL
Photo of capped honeycomb: link.
Did this work? Can you see the photo? This frame was put in empty except for a thin strip at the top on 14 October 2015. We harvested on 9 November 2015. Beautiful, clean, capped honeycomb!
for simon, sorry about the lighting, didn’t realise it had got dark so quick
https://youtu.be/q0mo8_U0_-8
I can’t comment on making section honey as it’s something on my ‘to do’ list. However, I’m not sure I agree with the comments about there being traces of formic and oxalic acids after treatment. Studies have shown that oxalic acid – at least – is not detectable above background levels after treatment. Can’t find the reference at the moment though …
Also, OSR crystallises rock hard and would be very unappealing as comb honey. Lime on the other hand is excellent. I was offered some cut comb lime honey yesterday and it was outstanding. Melt in your mouth good!
Hi David,
We would all appreciate it if you put this on your 2016 to-do list!
There is OSR around here … but I haven’t had a problem yet with crystallising. It’s at least 1 mile away and I assume it becomes a blend.
If it does crystallise, could you put the sections in honey warmer, to soften the honey but keep wax in shape/intact?
Roger
Here is a video I put together of me assembling Ross Rounds. There is no audio just music. Please mute if you do not like the music. First time I have put Ross Rounds together, and I found it quite easy really. Please excuse the video quality, this was just done off the cuff, as I found no info that I needed on Ross Rounds on the net. Thought it may be of help to others curious on them.
https://youtu.be/P9Z6dXWBPaU
Thanks Dawn. I actually found and used your video a few weeks ago when I assembled the Ross Rounds. It was very helpful. I wrote a post “Assembling Ross Rounds” after I completed the assembly. I now have them on 3 hives … I haven’t peeked yet!
Questions: Would you ever put 2 racks/supers of Ross Rounds on a hive? How are your sections doing?