Honey super stacking order and frame foundation type for comb vs. honey production qu

[rurbanski]

I was going to attempt to produce some grade A comb this season (Maybe county fair entry)and had a few questions on super stacking order and if it affects comb quality.

Does it make any difference or does quality differ when a super set up for comb production is 1st on the hive, second on top of a super set up for honey, two above the honey only supers etc.? Or is it better advised to do comb production exclusively on any single hive?

I am going for appearance as much as anything thing, does the order of stacking affect capping type (wet vs. dry)? Can dry capping be “encouraged”?

My intent is to cut comb from foundation frames set up for that purpose vs. using molded frames set up specifically for round or square shaped comb production, curious if anyone has tried both and had an opinion as to what gave better quality final product?

[robherc]

If you're wanting nice, clean, natural-looking comb honey, why not put in a few foundationless frames for it? You could actually just put empty frames in there, in every-other-one spacing & bring up a few frames of brood in between...put them right on top of the brood nest (and queen excluder, of course) and the bees should draw, fill, and cap them quickly & evenly...assuming, of course, that you're on a good flow at the time.

That said, I'm working mostly from a theory standpoint here, as my only lang. equipment are my nucs/swarm traps; everyone else lives in the 19" wide TBH boxes.

[HONEYDEW]

Couple things here, If you put foundationless frames in the honey super the bees will draw mostly drone cell size mixed with worker size cells definitely not what you want for fair prizes. wet cappings vs dry is a bee genetics thing some make wet some dry find which hive does mostly dry and use them. the best way to get nice uniform combs for the fair or anything for that matter is to place a undrawn comb honey foundation in between two drawn extractor combs in the dead center of the honey super, or every other frame undrawn in a drawn comb super...

[rurbanski]

Thanks Honeydew,

I was thinking using the drawn honey super to make "pretty" comb.

I will give it a try this season.

[kspitze]

I am a beginner - I have 2 hives that are both doing nicely so far. I just discovered that I must have accidentally ordered shallow frames but medium supers last Fall. I am just now putting them together. What are the problems associated with using them in this combination in the short run? I'll be making another order in a month or so, but want to put on a super now if possible.

[bluegrass]

I just discovered that I must have accidentally ordered shallow frames but medium supers last Fall. I am just now putting them together. What are the problems associated with using them in this combination in the short run?

Yes the bees will draw comb off the bottom of the shallow frames and you will be wasting their efforts. You can run the medium boxes on a table saw and cut them down to shallow.

[Bee Bliss]

kspitze,

The questions are "What did you want to run?.......medium supers or shallow supers? Are you using foundation or foundationless? "


Short run.......

If you want to run shallow honey supers, then put your shallow frames in the medium boxes. Yes, you will have to scrape a little off the bottom, but the filled in frame will be good for when you get your shallow boxes.

If you want to run medium supers, you can put the shallow frames in there as bottomless frames (3 sided in which just the bottom is missing.) Then do crush and strain to harvest honey and wax. Or, you could still assemble the shallow frames with 4 sides and still crush and strain for the harvest.

Don't you have medium frames or shallow boxes from your other hive from the year before? You can swap equipment between hives.

[Adrian Quiney WI]

I saw this on Dave Cushman's site recently, in a nutshell you extract honey and then put it in a hive top feeder. Below the feeder you place your comb section supers. This, reportedly, results in very clean combs drawn very quickly.
http://www.dave-cushman.net/bee/easysections.html

[Michael Bush]

Judging at county fairs they want comb honey that looks like it came from a factory, not something that looks like the bees made it. You'll need thin surplus foundation so the rows will be nice and perfect. You need it drawn quickly so it will be white and soft. You need it to have no travel stains, so you need to pull it quickly after it's capped.