Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
containing the plastic frames are removed, and the frames are divided into two. What
remains is a round section of comb honey, capped by the bees, already in its container,
and ready to eat. All you have to do is cover each side.
The parts and pieces of a Ross Round Comb Honey Frame: To use, insert the sheet of
thin foundation, put the rings in the holes and snap the two sides of the frame together.
Eight frames fit in a ten-frame super (six in an eight frame), and there are four round
sections in each frame. To harvest, open the frame, lift out the rounds, trim the excess
foundation, cover, and you have your finished product.
Ross Round sections: showing wet (left) and dry (right) cappings, ready to sell. Both are
excellent, but dry cappings always seem to sell best.
Comb Honey History
There's a wonderful history associated with comb honey equipment and the legacy
of producing this perfect crop. When the movable frame hive came along in the
1850s producing extracted, liquid honey blossomed. Sadly, taking advantage of
this product blossomed too—unscrupulous honey packers could add inexpensive
sugar syrup to the honey, diluting its cost and quality, but not its texture or thick-
ness. As a result consumers began to doubt the honesty of liquid honey produ-
cers, favoring comb honey even more since it seemed impossible to tamper with
its quality.
Comb honey's popularity exploded and manufacturing the basswood (
Tilia
sp.)
equipment exploded also. Basswood's long grain enabled it to be easily bent to
form the wooden sections that held the foundation the bees would fill with honey
comb, then honey. These were harvested as is, complete with cappings intact—the
most perfect form of honey imaginable. These wooden boxes were mostly pro-
duced in the northern parts of the United States because the natural honey flow
was fast and furious, which was necessary for filling those basswood boxes.
