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Making "Comb Honey" Good or Bad..

37K views 128 replies 30 participants last post by  Michael Palmer 
#1 ·
I am thinking of doing a box of comb honey next season. I was checking out the Rossman Apiaries catalog and the "Ross Rounds" 10 frame is $95.
My question is, is comb honey worth doing? What do they sell for at a farmers market? Also, is this a good or bad thing to be doing? Any advise from someone with experience making comb honey would be appreciated. Any advise on marketing it would also help..
 
#2 ·
Some bees take to it some have to be coaxed. Best advice would be to crowd the bees, place your ross super on and monitor, sometime you can add the ross super and your normal super you use above that.
When I say crowd the bees, I mean if you have double brood chambers, place your brood and honey and pollen into bottom box , so your bees are oozing out. Then they will draw the rounds and round round we go, wee hoo! where we stop no one knows.....
 
#4 ·
Why make section comb honey, and have to deal with all the management involved with forcing the bees to work in the sections. Why not make cut comb. Not really much to it. If you can get an extracting super with wired foundation drawn and filled, you can do the same with comb honey foundation.

I put on 300 supers this year. We're still cutting it up, but looks like there's 6-8,000 cuts. At $5@, is that not worth it?
 
#5 ·
to produce honey comb there is a cost in honey to produce that wax.

Based on info that it takes 30 grams of wax to hold 1 kg of honey I have done the following calculation.

Or 1kg of honey comb is the equivalent of 1.32 kg of honey.

You need to decide on the labour cost of honey comb verses extracting honey

the set out of the table looks good at the moment but may not look too good when posted.

I sell cut honey comb at my local market based on $38 per kg, that gives me a honey price of $29 kg.

I sell honey in 1 kg plastic tug (tub cost $0.85 plus label) for $10


HONEY COMB PRODUCTION
ECONOMICS


Assumptions
Wax to store 1 kg honey 3% 46 gm
Honey to produce 46 gm of wax 322 gm

1 Kg honey comb equivalent to 1.322 kg honey


Acceptable Minimum
Honey price Honey comb
Equivalent

$5.... $6.61
$6.... $7.93
$7.... $9.25
$8... $10.58
$9...... $11.90
$10.... $13.22
$11 .... $14.54
$12.... $15.86
$13.... $17.19
$14.... $18.51
$15.... $19.83
$16.... $21.15
$17.... $22.47
$18.... $23.80
$19.... $25.12
$20... $26.44
 
#7 ·
I pull out a frame early in the season (as soon as it is capped) cut it up on the cooling tray and make cut comb. It is like the first tomato of the year. We put it in the plastic containers at under $0.25 and freeze it. Put the frame back in and let them do it over. I am obviously not in the same class as the other posters but the sell at our farmers market for $9 each (4" sqauares)
 
#11 ·
Minz, on a similar scale, I made five frames of cut comb this year - just bought the specialty thin foundation and slipped them in with five other production frames. I made 15 squares and sold out in a few minutes on Facebookat $10 per. Of the fifteen, two had tried It before, 13 wanted to try it - all asked for more!
For one ten-frame shallow that's $300 in sales. I used the fancy plactic boxes, but the clamshells are cheaper. I used a medium super, which had a ton of excess - should've used the shallows!

I can't sell hundreds of supers of it, but I know I can move a few supers-worth easily!
 
#14 ·
I use comb honey foundation, i cut 2 in. wide strips and put them in med. frames, they will draw the foundation to the bottom of the frame with new wax. I can get eight 8oz slabs from one frame and sell it in a clear plastic sandwich box for $4.00, thats $32.00 a frame x 10.:thumbsup: Jack
 
#19 ·
There is an art to making good comb honey - I don't know the secrets. Every time i try to crowd the bees and get them to do Ross Rounds the bees end up swarming. Suggest reading Richard Taylor's book and talking with people (like Mike P) who make excellent comb honey. (Hint, try the people who win the comb honey contests at places like EAS - think Karen Thurlow-Kimball, winner at EAS this year)
 
#23 ·
I reported an observation in another thread that is more relevant here.

Comb honey made with foundation has a thick center wall with thin sidewalls. "Natural Comb Honey" has all thin cell walls. The center wall is the same thickness as the sides. There is a difference when the two are compared one bite from each. The thin-walled comb has a more delicate taste, whereas the thick-walled is more chewy.

Whether this makes any difference in marketability is questionable though, since both look the same in a package, and consumers are not aware of the difference in taste. Might win a county fair prize though!
 
#24 ·
I don't produce near as much comb honey as Mike Palmer, and like Mike i sell comb honey to other beekeepers to meet their customer demaned, i also sell it at the farmers market.Like mike i don't go along with the contaminated foundation part,i use a thin strip of the thin foundation for a starter on my comb honey frames and the bees fill in the rest (pure comb?) Using the thin foundation for a starter, i've not seen or heard of it having a thick center. Jack
 
#27 ·
i don't go along with the contaminated foundation part,
Perhaps you would like to do some reading about this issue? Here is one study:

http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0009754

Below is a snippet from the link above:

Twenty-one wax samples from six different commercial and two private foundation sources were uniformly contaminated with up to 10.1 ppm fluvalinate (mean of 2±0.6 ppm) and up to 14.3 ppm coumaphos (mean of 3.3±1.0 ppm, Table 5), which is 27% and 100%, respectively, of mean detection levels found in comb wax overall (Table 1). One organic beekeeper source lacked coumaphos in its foundation, although 0.5 ppm of fluvalinate was still present. Much lower levels of 25 other pesticides and metabolites were found in 21 samples, at an average of 5.7 detections per sample, which is lower than the 8 detections per sample of comb wax overall. Systemics were found less often in foundation (5.8% of detections, Table 5) than in comb wax (Table 1). Other frequently detected contaminants include chlorpyrifos (81%), endosulfan (38%), chlorothalonil (29%) and other pyrethroids including cypermethrin, cyfluthrin and esfenvalerate (Table 5). Interestingly, three distinct old foundation samples from prior to miticide use lacked fluvalinate and coumaphos as expected, but contained more chlorpyrifos and significant levels of other pesticides no longer registered including bendiocarb, p,p'-DDE, and heptachlor (not shown).

 
#26 ·
What are the characteristics to look for in a hive to produce good comb honey? Is it the way they cap it or how fast they cap it, like to be crowded? I really don't buy into the contamination factor either, especially for thin foundation. The bulk of the comb will be what's drawn by the bees and your comb is only as clean as your bees are. If they're loaded up with pesticides, guess what, so is all that brand new wax they're laying out.
 
#29 ·
Where's all the Round-up that's killing bees ...
I'm no fan of Monsanto, but Roundup (glyphosate) and its generic offspring are herbicides, and generally not harmful to bees or other insects (unless they drown in a puddle of it). I use glyphosate in an appropriate manner, and find it a useful tool.

Here's my post from an earlier thread:

In the document linked below, published by North Carolina State University,
http://ipm.ncsu.edu/agchem/5-toc.pdf

glyphosate (Roundup) is listed in group 3


GROUP 3 — RELATIVELY NON-TOXIC. These pesticides can be used around bees with a minimum risk of injury.
...
Glyphosate
...


The .PDF doesn't cut-n-paste well here, so use the link if you don't like my crude attempt.

The biggest problem with glysophate is that it generally has a surfactant as a small part of the mix. Surfactants are essentially detergents, and will kill bees if they get sprayed directly with enough of it.

The other problem with Roundup is "image". It was developed by Monsanto, so it is branded as part of the Evil Empire. :eek: Howewer, Monsanto's patents have expired, so today many manufacturers make generic equivalents.


Here's a more comprehensive document on glysophate and and its effects:
http://pmep.cce.cornell.edu/profiles..._prf_0285.html


IV. ENVIRONMENTAL CONSIDERATIONS
Toxicological investigations conducted with bobwhite quail, mallard ducks, honey bees, rainbow trout, bluegills, and other species of fish show that these species have an extremely high tolerance to glyphosate.



If you want to read the complete earlier thread on Roundup, its here:
http://www.beesource.com/forums/showthread.php?268687-The-Roundup-Thread
 
#30 ·
Hi Rader,

I was just being funny. I know glyphosate is an herbicide and should not be toxic to bees. Yep, China makes the glyphosate for cheap these days. A lot of the surfactants are designed to appease the general public as well and can be fairly harsh. People want to see yellowing and burnt leaves shortly after they spray so the surfactants are designed to burn the plants to some extent so there's the perception of hey, it's really working quickly. Glyphosate is deactivated quickly by binding to any organic compounds so tolerance is high is most species, but it's also why you need good clean water when using it.
 
#31 ·
JRG13, sorry for misinterpreting your humor. The subject of Roundup touches a nerve in some people, and then sometimes all sorts of crazy things get said. :rolleyes: Using smilies :D is sometimes helpful to indicate you are just having fun.:cool:

As far as seeing an impact (dead leaves) from glyphosate shortly after spraying, I understand completely. But perception is not always reality.

This paragraph is not directed to JRG13, but everyone who uses Roundup (glysophate). The best way to use glyphosate, is to kill the roots along with the tops of the plants. But it takes time for the active ingredient to travel down to the roots in order to kill them. That means that for people who use higher than the recommended dosages, the tops of the plants wither and brown quickly, :D but the roots are not affected because the herbicide has not had time to get to the roots. :( So the plant just resprouts, and people are unhappy. You really need to restrain yourself from applying overdoses, so that the top of the plant will live long enough to deliver a lethal dose to the roots. Otherwise you are just wasting your time and money.
 
#32 ·
Are there any published studies that compare honey yields in hives drawing new comb vs. hives supplied with drawn comb?

Since the comb builders tend to be a different age than the foragers, apart from a very brief delay while the very first comb is built, I wonder if drawing comb really does have any significant effect on honey yields.
 
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