Type of Super!

[ronnyclif]

Today I placed a medium on top of the brood box with the idea of using it as a brood box.. Question, I am going to order my supers this week, and was wondering what is best for someone with (5) hives. I want to keep the expense down(Don't mind the work). Should I but the bee rounds or plain & extract, or possibly plain and cut my own??

[ChellesBees]

I haven't checked, but I think the bee rounds are more expensive, I think this mostly depends on what your goal is. If you want to market comb honey, the rounds may be the way to go, but you will need other supers besides. Staying with one size (probably medium) for everything will be your first cost savings. If you go foundationless, that will be your second savings point. Then you can crush if you don't want to extract. Cheaper for you, but not for the bees. They use a lot of honey to remake the wax. You can also do cut comb if you go foundationless, just don't try to sell the pieces that had brood in them.

[Michael Bush]

Cut comb is the simplest. You do have to cut and drain where with rounds you just pull them out and put the lids and lables on. I'd go with the cut comb for now. I'd get all mediums so you have less different sizes to mess with. Rounds are trickier and require a bit more managment, but they sell for more.

[ronnyclif]

thanks for the help!

[Jon McFadden]

I tried my hand with comb honey years ago. There weren't Ross Rounds then. You made a special shallow super with a strip of metal to hold the rest of the parts vertically. The wooden boxes were cut almost through with a 90° cut so the boxes would fold into a square. The foundation slipped down in the middle of a set of boxes. These were held together with flat metal springs. I like gadgets, so this was neat to me. I would wait for the orange blossoms and stack them on my strongest hives.
It was really neat to pull off the pure white comb and put it into these little cardboard boxes. I think I still have some around somewhere.
There was a lot of waste doing this because the bees wouldn't always fill out the boxes along the edge.
Jon