Comb honey is

honey Honey is a sweet and viscous substance made by several bees, the best-known of which are honey bees. Honey is made and stored to nourish bee colonies. Bees produce honey by gathering and then refining the sugary secretions of plants (primaril ...

intended for consumption by humans, which is still contained within its original hexagonal-shaped

beeswax Beeswax (''cera alba'') is a natural wax produced by honey bees of the genus ''Apis''. The wax is formed into scales by eight wax-producing glands in the abdominal segments of worker bees, which discard it in or at the hive. The hive worker ...

cells, called

honeycomb A honeycomb is a mass of hexagonal prismatic wax cells built by honey bees in their nests to contain their larvae and stores of honey and pollen. Beekeepers may remove the entire honeycomb to harvest honey. Honey bees consume about of honey t ...

. It has received no processing, filtering, or manipulation, and is in the state that

honey bees A honey bee (also spelled honeybee) is a eusocial flying insect within the genus ''Apis'' of the bee clade, all native to Afro-Eurasia. After bees spread naturally throughout Africa and Eurasia, humans became responsible for the current cosmop ...

have produced it. Before the invention of the honey extractor almost all honey produced was in the form of comb honey. Today, most honey is produced for extraction but comb honey remains popular among consumers both for eating 'as is' and for combining with extracted honey to make chunk honey. Hobbyists and sideliners can develop their beekeeping skills by producing comb honey, which takes more rigorous attention to beekeeping than the production of extracted honey. Because of the more demanding labor involved, comb honey has greater retail value than extracted honey. ($17/pound compared to $6.50/pound US).Monthly Price Roundup, ''American Bee Journal'', Vol 115 No 11, p 1178, November 2015 Comb honey production is more suitable for areas with an intense prolonged honeyflow from

eucalyptus ''Eucalyptus'' () is a genus of over seven hundred species of flowering trees, shrubs or mallees in the myrtle family, Myrtaceae. Along with several other genera in the tribe Eucalypteae, including ''Corymbia'', they are commonly known as eucal ...

alfalfa Alfalfa () (''Medicago sativa''), also called lucerne, is a perennial flowering plant in the legume family Fabaceae. It is cultivated as an important forage crop in many countries around the world. It is used for grazing, hay, and silage, as we ...

alsike Clover or trefoil are common names for plants of the genus ''Trifolium'' (from Latin ''tres'' 'three' + ''folium'' 'leaf'), consisting of about 300 species of flowering plants in the legume or pea family Fabaceae originating in Europe. The genus h ...

, and yellow clover. Wooded areas are not as suitable for comb honey production, as bees tend to collect more

propolis Propolis or bee glue is a resinous mixture that honey bees produce by mixing saliva and beeswax with exudate gathered from tree buds, sap flows, or other botanical sources. It is used as a sealant for unwanted open spaces in the beehive. Pro ...

, making the harvesting of comb honey more difficult. This problem has been largely circumvented with the adoption of specialized frames, such as the Ross Round frame, which prevent accumulation of propolis on saleable units.

Hive management

Populous honey bee colonies are usually reduced to single hive body at the beginning of the

honey flow Honey flow is a term used by beekeepers indicating that one or more major nectar sources are in bloom and the weather is favorable for bees to fly and collect the nectar in abundance. The higher northern and southern latitudes with their longe ...

when one or more comb honey supers are added. Comb honey can either be produced in wooden sections, shallow frames or Ross Rounds. The successful production of comb honey requires that the hive remain crowded without inducing

swarming Swarm behaviour, or swarming, is a collective behaviour exhibited by entities, particularly animals, of similar size which aggregate together, perhaps milling about the same spot or perhaps moving ''en masse'' or migrating in some direction. ...

. Young prolific queens help rapid colony population expansion with less likelihood of swarming. Caucasian honey bees are often preferred for their tendency to keep a constricted brood nest and for their production of white wax cappings, making more attractive honey combs.

References

*''The New Comb Honey Book'', by Richard Taylor, 1981, Linden Books {{DEFAULTSORT:Comb Honey Honey Beekeeping

Hive management

See also

References