Harlan Atfield was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Nigeria. He said that many beekeepers there kept their bees in clay pots one inverted on top of the other. To harvest honey they took off the top pot and heated it on afire until thewax melted and came to the top. When it cooled the wax was removed and you were left with a pot of honey. When I was in Ethiopia I saw the harves several places. In one the Hive was a woven tube about one foot in diameter and 4 feet long. The harvesting was done after dark and the comb was dug out and put into pots. Water was then added the wort was mixed thoroughly and the whole mess fermented. The wax was then skimmed off and the rest was bottled as Tej or mead. One feature of "farmers mead" in Ethiopia is the larva floating on top. It is recommended to have a large soup-strainer mustache to filter it out. The delicacy for the beekeepers was to pull out a brood comb and eat it savoring the larva and spitting out the wax. The bees were brushed into a fire to reduce as much as possible the threat of bee stings. I guess the point is that hauling supers to a central point for extracing the honey was not of concern to them.