Andre asked and said "How many Ross Rounds can you put on one hive ? what is
the best method ? one
deep ? then the R/R ? I have a few R/R supers around but never had any luck
getting them to fill them out."
 
I deliberately did not reply immediately as I wanted to see the responses of
others.  There was a time in past years when this inquiry produced a couple
of dozen responses, and considerable detail.  I know some say "use the
archives, dummy", but I am reasonably computer literate and still find the
archives difficult and very time consuming to use.
 
To the questions and observation:
- I am in upstate NY, and usually have a few hives that will fill five Ross
Round supers.  I will always get two filled, and average three per hive. I
know a commercial beekeeper in upstate NY who concentrates on producing as
many as possible per hive and he always plans on averaging eight, and in a
normal year achieves that!  How many you will get depends on how well you
manage your bees and your flow.  If you manage your bees well, the weight of
the sections will come to about 60% of what you would produce if the bees
were storing nectar in drawn comb.  Each full Ross Round super has about 18
pounds of sections.  By averaging three, I am getting about 54 pounds of
sections, which is roughly the equivalent of 90 pounds of honey for
extraction when produced on drawn comb.
- I keep my hives year round in a deep and a medium (6 5/8th), with the deep
on top.  See the May 98' issue of Bee Culture for more detail.  This is the
easiest method.  If you try to produce section comb on top of two deeps you
will almost certainly fail.  You can reduce the two deeps to one and be very
successful, but it is a lot of work, partly because of additional swarm
control procedures that become necessary.  I do not recommend the use of
queen excluders, especially for someone just learning.
- One must be an excellent beekeeper to consistently produce good comb
honey.  On the other hand, there is no better way to really become a
beekeeper (compared to a beehaver) than to learn how to raise good comb
honey.  Once a beekeeper gets the timing worked out (which is unique to
geographic areas), learns to recognize strong hives, and learns the basics
of queen management, producing comb honey becomes easy.
 
The best book on the subject is Richard Taylor's The Comb Honey book.
(Which supercedes The New Comb Honey Book.)
 
I will be glad to address any additional specific questions you think of.
 
Lloyd
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Owner, Ross Rounds(tm)  the finest in comb honey production.