natural comb

[DANIEL QUINCE]

What do you do with the comb you get during a cut-out? Most of honey is not capped and some of the brood you cannot save. How do you extract the almost honey, and what to do with the scrap brood comb?

[jim b]

I think many folks would suggest that you leave it out for the bees to clean up and recoup. They will take what they want and can use and leave the rest, but it wont be much. Probably not enough to melt down for a birthday candle. ;)
I am not sure about this, so take it with healthy skepticism, but if you could put another box on top of the hive you just made from the cutout and put the "scraps" in with a tight lid on top to prevent robbing, the hive would be able to retreve what was theirs in the first place and be that much better off that much sooner. Let others comment on that before you take it to heart.
-j

[onelove]

fwiw, I agree with putting the scraps in the top box area as he describes

[Michael Bush]

I try to have two or three buckets. You can throw empty comb in one, capped comb in another and uncapped in another. I crush and strain the capped. Let the bees clean up the uncapped, and melt down the empty.

[carbide]

I do the same as Michael. I also melt down any scraps of misc. brood comb that I don't tie into the frames for the hive. There always seem to be some of this left over when I'm done.

[ June 26, 2006, 12:40 PM: Message edited by: carbide ]