Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Using sections
You can place wooden inserts called sections (either round or square) into the frames,
each with some foundation in it, thus dividing the area of the frame into a series of
smaller frames. You then encourage the bees to pull out the foundation in these. Once
pulled out, the bees will fill them with honey and cap them. The round sections are now
mainly made of plastic, and the wooden square sections are often purchased as wooden
strips that you make up yourself.
People eating comb honey don't want a thick midrib or wires in the honey, and so you
should use very thin foundation that can be purchased for this purpose with no wiring.
Remember to cut this foundation to fit the sections when it is at room temperature,
otherwise it will easily break up. Sections can be used in half and full supers and, to
make sure the bees pull out these small frames, the colony must be a very populous one
that has started a honey flow, or at least is storing surplus honey, before you put the
sections in the hive. If no honey is already being stored, the bees can pull holes in the
foundation of the small frames. The trick, therefore, is to replace the super in which the
bees are rapidly storing honey with the super of frames with sections.
One beekeeper who regularly produces these sections told me (for I have never used
frames like this) that a balancing act is involved here. If you place another super of
sections on too soon, you will end up with frames of half-filled sections, but if you leave
it too late in supering up and the bees become too crowded, you could end up inducing
swarming. For successful comb honey production, however, you do need crowded
colonies, so make sure you ventilate the hives well - full, open entrances and perhaps
the boxes very slightly staggered. Another point he made is that, once full, the sections
must be removed swiftly while the cappings are still white. If you leave them too long
the cappings will discolour with millions of little feet crawling over them. Experience
tells.
Using non-wired, thin foundation
Another way of making comb honey is to use full frames of non-wired, thin foundation
and, when you harvest the honey (again with dispatch to prevent discolouring from the
bees' feet), you cut the comb with a comb cutter (see Figure 24) and place each delicious
slice into a plastic container made for the purpose (see Figure 25). These comb cutters
