Nothing to most of us. Comb is valuable if it's been drawn in our own hives. Rarely do you find beekeepers that are willing to take on someone else's comb. Yes, I know an exception is when you buy a nuc but a living colony will exhibit signs of disease that would alert the beekeeper. Comb....not so much.

 

I find that Odd..... I had people asking me for drawn frames for the past few years to put in swarm traps. it seemed all the rage in getting started beekeeping around here Free Bees! It is clean honeycomb guess I will Just keep it rather than have the girls draw more.

 

yup i agree for you its a very valuable commodity however to other beeks ( me at least) its a potential source of disease and problems.

 

agreed. the comb is worth more to you than anyone else, 10 times more valuable than the frame/foundation would cost to replace, especially if you know it's clean...

 

Well, a frame with foundation is about $2. A well drawn comb I would think about 4-5 dollars. The idea that all combs except yours are disease ridden seems ridiculous.

 

of course it is ridiculous to believe that all combs are disease ridden, but even more riduculous to believe that none are. please share your method for determining which are and which are not.

Doesn't Alabama prohibit importing comb into the state because of the fear of contamination?

yes. that comes back in the day when american foul brood was the scourge and the law was passed to prevent the entry of afb spore infected equipment into the state. importing packages however is totally permissible and doesn't slow down the importing of mites, viruses and other pathogens such as efb.

bottom line - keep your comb for yourself because money can't buy it and if you can't use it your not beekeeping. don't buy used comb unless you can have it irradiated first, and good luck trying to get that done in most locations.

 

Doesn't Alabama prohibit importing comb into the state because of the fear of contamination?

Alex

 

When I was starting out with nucs I would've paid extra for some empty drawn comb, mostly because swarm prevention is difficult when you're starting out without it. If the comb was coming from the same apiary as the nucs I wouldn't have worried too much about disease, as it would've mostly been pathogens I was inheriting anyway. I might've paid as much as $10/frame!

But now that I'm in my second year, I already feel like I have enough of my own drawn combs, and can make more. I'd no sooner introduce foreign ones than get an unnecessary blood transfusion. I don't think my combs are any cleaner than the next guy's, but if we swapped a few with each other, probably we'd both be worse off.

So anyway, I don't know if I'm typical of the market, but I'm thinking there might be demand for 5-frame nucs that come with an extra 5 empty drawn combs, from the same apiary. Loose comb seems like a harder sell, not because it's a worse vector of disease necessarily, but just a more avoidable one.

 

those are good points cfalls and perhaps i was a little harsh with my comment above, apologies to the forum. (i'm dealing with a disease communicable by used comb at the moment so a bit hypersensitive about it i guess)

i guess the question for i'llbeedan is what is the history of the comb? what happened to the bees that used to be on it? i suppose those who pull supers and store comb off the hives after harvesting might end up with a surplus of drawn comb without any bees on it, but other than that having a colony die is the only other way i am aware of...

 

Well as stated above it is comb from extracted honey supers last fall. It has been cleaned by the bees removed again and spritzed with BT for winter storage. it is first crop clean yellow wax. I have people asking me for drawn comb so they can put it is swarm traps. Or second year keepers to facilitate the growth of splits. All I wanted to know is what I should charge. Just wanted to be fair to the buyer and myself. It is clean, quality comb and the hives it came from are all still alive. What I do not sell will go back on the hives within days.

I have sold about all I care to spare for $10.00 per frame. Swarm season and splitting is at prime in my area right now. I just wanted to know a fair price. Not the logistics and moralities of selling the stuff. Why is it when you ask a simple question here you get everything from the how to's to the chemical make up of materials? but rarely a simple answer.

 

An answer to that is that if you had given this information first that context would have elicited different responses. Without context our reactions are highly influenced by our previous experiences. Nothing unique about Bee source posters.

 

I don't sell many empty drawn comb frames, but I sell a lot of frames of brood. Price for frames of brood is $30-$35 this year. Why sell them empty?

 

Because people were asking me for empty drawn frames so they can put them in swarm traps.

 

I am always puzzled by the fear of drawn comb on this forum. What diseases are comb contagious besides AFB? Some say EFB and others say it isn't. Mites? I don't think so? Nosema? Chalkbrood?

I have acquired a lot of drawn comb over the years.
Often it is too crappy to use and I chuck it frame and all. But a lot comes from crashing beginners and has not even seen a whole season. What appears usable I smell and visually inspect each comb looking for AFB. Last week I was given eight almost brand new medium supers, two garden covers including 20 beautiful blonde extracting combs. I didn't even inspect those. I have never felt that my hives have gotten diseases from acquired combs using general precautions.

 

I am always puzzled by the fear of drawn comb on this forum. What diseases are comb contagious besides AFB? Some say EFB and others say it isn't. Mites? I don't think so? Nosema? Chalkbrood?

I have acquired a lot of drawn comb over the years.
Often it is too crappy to use and I chuck it frame and all. But a lot comes from crashing beginners and has not even seen a whole season. What appears usable I smell and visually inspect each comb looking for AFB. Last week I was given eight almost brand new medium supers, two garden covers including 20 beautiful blonde extracting combs. I didn't even inspect those. I have never felt that my hives have gotten diseases from acquired combs using general precautions.



I agree completely!

 

Wow, good for you getting $10 a pop for drawn mediums. Since a medium frame with Acorn foundation costs me less than $2, it seems I owe my girls a raise.

 

They were deeps I use all deeps.

 

How do I delete a bad post?

 

My bad, you said that in the first post. Anyway, unlike some of the others, I would have no problem with using clean comb from healthy hives if I needed it. When I first started and had no drawn comb, a box worth of drawn deeps for $100 would have really helped out.

On a side note, if you are selling some for swarm traps, shouldn't it be the old dark brood comb?

 

I Suppose dark comb would be better But I do not have any. I really do not understand all the hubbub about drawn comb. Now My mentor cautioned me about used equipment. And the dreaded AFB. It is not like I am trying to sell comb out of hives that died. There are people are asking for them because of a video they are seeing on utube. Bees rarely winter kill from AFB so I use my comb from winter kills in brood boxes myself unless it is really funky.

 

I guess a person could figure out how much the wax in a frame weighs and sell it for the going price of bees wax in their area or calculate the value of the honey lost for the bees to produce the wax for the frame and the value of the frame.
As for me, being a fisherman, I would decide what I think it is worth, throw that price out there and see if anyone bites.

Alex

 

To be clear, when I said I would be reluctant to introduce foreign comb for fear of contagion, I just meant the ignorant sort of fear. I don't know how risky it is, so would default to playing it safe until learning more. It's a really interesting question, actually!

Sorry, I don't know what the going rate for drawn comb is. I kind of suspect it's such a niche product that there really is no "going rate" the way there is for honey or wax or even nucs. That's why I responded with the idea of bundling the comb with nucs from the same apiary.

Just as an example, my local bee store sells "regular" nucs for $175 and "local overwintered" nucs for $250 (!), mostly to people who will not have drawn comb for those colonies to expand onto. It seems to me like a nuc with 5 or 10 empty drawn combs ought to go for at least as much of a premium as the overwintered nucs, as drawn combs could make your first year as a beekeeper so much easier. (Plus, the regular nucs come with a frame feeder and a plywood box, while the overwintered nucs just come in jester boxes, so arguably the "overwintered" premium is more like $100.) So anyway, my super rough guess is, bundled with a nuc, 5 or 10 frames of empty drawn comb is worth at least $75 in my area, implying a value of like $5 to $15 per frame. *shrug*