While honey bees remain indifferent to the entire subject, beekeepers get atwist over the mere thought of doing it wrong. In truth, [...]]]> Putting a new super on top of existing supers is called “top supering.” Adding it above the brood box but below the other honey supers is called “bottom supering.” Which is best?

While honey bees remain indifferent to the entire subject, beekeepers get atwist over the mere thought of doing it wrong. In truth, there is no wrong. Do what makes you happy.

Arguments for top supering go like this:

• It’s faster. You just drop the new one on top.
• It’s less work. You don’t have to lift the other supers off and put them back on.
• It’s easier to see when you need to add yet another super. You just take off the lid and look.
• A filled super left just above the brood nest acts like a queen excluder. Because the queen wants to keep the brood nest together in one place, she will not cross a barrier of honey to lay eggs in  a new location.

And arguments for bottom supering go like this:

• Bees begin working in the new super sooner if it is close to the brood nest.
• It reduces travel stain because the bees don’t have to walk over capped honey to get to the new storage area. (Clean cappings are important for comb honey producers.)
• Bees expend less energy because they don’t have to walk so far.

A paper published in the American Bee Journal by Jennifer Berry and Keith Delaplane (2000) found no statistically significant differences in honey yield between the two methods of supering. But still, the battle rages on.

My own preference is for top supering–and weight is the reason. I don’t move honey-filled supers anymore than I have to. I usually put section honey supers directly above the brood nest. These act like queen excluders because queens don’t seem to like those little boxes. Once that super starts to fill I add either another section super or a shallow super, but I never need a queen excluder.

I’ve reduced travel stain over my section honey by giving the bees an upper entrance–one that opens directly above the highest super. It’s not a perfect solution, but it’s pretty good.

For those of you who still can’t decide whether to super above or below, I strongly recommend doing both. Just trade some of the frames in the old super for frames in the new one. If you put capped honey in the middle of the bottom box you will still get the “queen excluder effect” most of the time and the presence of honey in the upper box will attract workers to it. The bees can fill the remaining frames in any order they like.

Rusty

Although the moths [...]]]> The purpose of freezing wax combs is to kill the eggs and larvae of wax moths. Wax moths can destroy beeswax combs, especially combs in weak colonies and those in storage. A strong colony of bees does a good job of controlling the moths, but a weak colony can become overrun.

Although the moths cannot survive long periods of cold, a healthy hive stays fairly warm all winter long. The moth larvae chew cavities in the frames, spin their cocoons, and spend the winter as pupae kept warm and toasty by the honey bee cluster. In the spring, they emerge as adult moths.

The larvae of wax moths destroy combs while they search for food—mostly cocoons of bee pupae and bits of pollen. For this reason, comb that once contained brood is much more susceptible to attack by wax moths than comb that has contained only honey. On occasion, however, the moths will destroy comb that has never contained brood. Such is the lot of beekeepers.

Freezing overnight will destroy all stages of wax moths. It is not necessary to store combs in the freezer—only to freeze them overnight. But freezing will not prevent the immediate re-infestation of wax moths if the comb is placed where moths can reach it.

Combs that are frozen and immediately returned to the hive will immediately become re-infected, but a strong hive will manage them. Combs frozen and placed in a shed or garage will also become re-infected if adult moths are in the area. Only combs kept away from adult moths will remain moth-free.

Comb can be frozen even if it contains honey. Honey is low in moisture and will not expand and break the cells. If handled carefully, it can be frozen and thawed with no loss of quality and no change in appearance.

Comb honey producers routinely freeze their honey before packaging it. Even if the probability is small, no comb honey producer wants creepy crawlies writhing over the lovely comb—and certainly no customer wants to buy it. So combs are frozen and thawed before going to market.

But producers of extracted honey can freeze their frames as well, especially if they want to delay extraction until the entire crop is in. As long as the thawed comb is kept away from moths, it can be easily held until extraction time.

One word of caution about freezing: condensation. Condensation will form on combs that are taken from the freezer. If the combs are stored before they dry, mold will appear in a spectacular display of gross. An easy way to prevent mold is to wrap the combs tightly in plastic wrap before you place them in the freezer. After you remove them from the freezer, allow them to come to room temperature before removing the plastic.

Rusty

A number of factors affect the price of comb honey, some more than others. The following issues (in random [...]]]> This question is asked frequently, not by beekeepers but by people who just want to buy a chunk of honeycomb. “You don’t even have to do anything to it,” was the complaint I heard recently.

A number of factors affect the price of comb honey, some more than others. The following issues (in random order) all play a part:

• The production of wax comb is energy expensive for the bees. Estimates vary but bees need to eat approximately 6-8 pounds of honey to produce a pound of wax. So if you priced the bees work based on the number of calories consumed, honey plus wax costs a lot more than just honey.

• Related to the above is the fact that comb honey production is a one-time use of wax comb, whereas extracted honey producers can use the same comb over and over again. So instead of spreading the cost of wax over many harvests, comb honey spreads it over only one.

• Beeswax is valuable, so even if a beekeeper did not plan to re-use his combs, he can make more money selling the wax and the honey separately—unless his comb honey price is high enough to cover the difference.

• A lot of “waste” is associated with comb honey production. Although this waste (imperfect combs, damaged combs, combs with brood, etc.) is put to other uses, it reduces the total yield from a crop of comb honey.

• Comb honey equipment is expensive. Whether the beekeeper uses basswood boxes, plastic boxes, or even just Styrofoam trays, there is a large outlay for all the materials necessary to prepare the honey supers and package the product. Also, storing and marketing is more expensive because the product is fragile and easily damaged—unlike honey in a jar.

• Comb honey production is more labor intensive for the beekeeper than extracted honey production. Especially if section honey is produced, bees must be managed at the brink of swarming to get them to fill those cute little boxes.

• Comb honey is not so sensitive to the effects of cheap imported honey dumped on U.S. markets. Most imported honey is extracted and so affects extracted honey prices to a greater degree.

• The fact the “pure, natural comb honey straight from the bee to you” has been embraced by both upscale restaurants and uppity food catalogs has given comb honey a boost. It is not hard to find catalogs selling comb honey at $24.95 for 12 ounces. While that is not the norm, comb honey at farmers markets and small retail outlets often hovers around $1 an ounce–especially in urban areas.

Rusty

With little brood to feed, foragers concentrate on bringing home nectar [...]]]> A cut-down split is a special technique often used by comb honey producers. The purpose of a cut-down split is to maximize the number of foragers that are bringing in nectar by minimizing the amount of brood a colony has to care for.

With little brood to feed, foragers concentrate on bringing home nectar rather than pollen, and nurse bees without brood responsibility soon become foragers as well. The result is lots of honey in a short period of time.

Timing of a cut-down split it important. To be effective, the cut-down should be completed just before the start of a main nectar flow. No matter how well you organize the split, it won’t produce more honey if there is no nectar to collect.

To make a cut-down split:

• Find the queen.

• Place the queen and nearly all the open brood, honey, and pollen in a new hive. Make sure these frames are covered with nurse bees to care for the open brood.

• Leave the capped brood, one frame of eggs, and a small amount of honey and pollen in the old hive. At the same time reduce the number of brood boxes in this old hive by one and add empty honey supers. (So if there were three brood boxes, cut back to two. If there were two brood boxes, cut back to one. Add supers after cutting back the brood boxes.)

• Place the new hive in a different location so all of the foragers return to the old hive.

I know this is confusing, so try this:

After you are set up, this is what happens:

• The old hive won’t swarm because it doesn’t have a queen or young brood.  The colony will raise a new queen from the eggs, but by the time the colony is strong, swarm season will be mostly over.

o   This old hive has many more foragers and nurses than are needed to care for the one frame of eggs. In addition, all the capped brood will soon hatch and replace the nurse bees.

o   Because the hive is now crowded (due to the reduced number of brood boxes) many of the newly hatched nurse bees will move into the supers and start building comb—even in comb honey supers.

o   The old nurse bees will also become foragers, but since there is little brood to care for, pollen needs will be low. So the huge crop of foragers will collect nectar like crazy and make a lot of honey in a very short time—which they will store in the newly build comb.

• The new hive won’t swarm because there are no foragers. It will take several weeks to build up a foraging force.

Rusty

In the normal course of walking from place to place in the hive, the worker bees track pollen, propolis, and other debris [...]]]> “Travel stain” is a phrase often heard in conjunction with comb honey. Travel stain is the discoloration of wax cappings covering the honey due to the “dirty feet” of honey bee workers.

In the normal course of walking from place to place in the hive, the worker bees track pollen, propolis, and other debris across the surface of the comb. The cappings take on an unpleasant yellow or brownish cast that is darkest in the main pathways and lighter toward the edges of the frames or section boxes—much like a carpet in a busy room.

In order to reduce travel stain some beekeepers eliminate the upper entrance. Forcing the workers to use the main entrance means they must walk further to get to the comb honey supers. During all this walking, a large part of the debris is left in the brood boxes and never makes it into the honey supers. Other beekeepers try to remove the comb honey sections as soon as they are are capped, or at least move them to the outside rows of the super where they will receive less traffic.

Travel stain is one of many problems that makes the production of comb honey more labor intensive than the production of extracted honey.

I find this practiced a bit odd. It’s akin to putting a whole orange into [...]]]> Chunk honey is a combination of extracted honey and comb honey. To package chunk honey, one or several pieces of honeycomb are placed in a jar and then the empty space around the comb is filled with extracted honey.

I find this practiced a bit odd. It’s akin to putting a whole orange into a carton of juice or a t-bone steak in a gallon of milk. I guess the consumer is supposed to say, “Oh! So that is where it comes from!”

The first time I saw chunk honey it bothered me, and it still does. It defies the natural order of the universe. In fact, it is inside-out. Honey is supposed to be inside the comb, not surrounding it.

Normally, beekeepers go to great effort to keep their comb honey white and clean and dripless. They take pride in a section of honey where every cell is brimming full yet sealed tight. Chunk honey is a slap in the face to all those meticulous beekeepers. It must have been invented by a teenager.

I often wonder if consumers who have never seen the inside of a beehive are confused by this—if they think that waxy thing in the jar is some kind of weird growth that happens in storage, like the slimy precipitate called “mother of vinegar?” I think this is a real possibility, especially in those jars in which no more than a cubic inch of comb rolls loosely over the bottom like a seaweed prodded by the tide. “What is that thing?”

The name “chunk honey” must mean a chunk of honey? Or does it mean a chunk in honey? Or honey in a chunk? None of it makes sense and if you say (or write) “chunk” enough times it starts sounding weird.

Rusty

Chunk honey. Photo by the author.