[avalonweddingsbcs]

just curious.. when i see photos of honey on the comb, it's a nice golden yellow bunch of wax with honey..

why is the burr comb in my hive a dark chocolate/black?

I took a chunk home and made a double boiler and melted it... it stayed black and i turned off the heat... it cooled and seperated .. a bit is golden yellow and some is still black.. is the black bee poop? or other impurities?

how do i get the nice yellow chunk honey later when i harvest...?

 

[RayMarler]

I think they will mix propolis in the wax for bur comb and brace comb.

 

[AmericasBeekeeper]

Burr comb is sometimes made from recycled wax scales. The bees mix it with propolis to strengthen the comb. I doubt they know it needs to be stronger without a frame on all sides, but we learn something from bees every day.

 

[AmericasBeekeeper]

You may get responses that it is poop left from pupa. Poop dissolves in water. Propolis hardly dissolves in anything short of lye. Propolis melts a little higher than beeswax.

 

[Countryboy]

when i see photos of honey on the comb, it's a nice golden yellow bunch of wax with honey..

That's freshly drawn wax.

I am mentoring a lady who had an old hive given to her that had been sitting in a barn for 30 or 40 years unused. Surprisingly, the old black brood combs were still in reasonably good shape, other than being hard as a brick. 2 weeks ago we started a package in that hive. I had added a frame of brood from one of my hives to help get her hive started.

I checked her hive today. The frame of brood I had given her had the top corners full of uncapped nectar. Today, there was capped honey in the corners of that frame.

At first glance, it appeared to be capped brood. The honey cappings were almost the same exact color of the capped brood in the hive. It was tan/brownish colored.

I'm assuming the bees may have reused some wax from the old combs, or affected in some way by the bees cleaning up the old frames.

The bees were starting to draw a little bit of snow white wax at the top of a couple frames.