Clay asked me to describe how I produce comb honey.  The short version, which is too short, is that three ingredients are necessary for >90% success:
  
1.  A queen produced in the current year
2.  Keep the brood nest open so the queen has enough space to lay
3.  Below the comb honey supers there should be no more than a deep and a medium, and a single deep is best
  
Those beekeepers who are not successful at producing comb honey generally say either "my bee swarmed" or "no matter what, I could not get them to draw the foundation".
  
If a over-wintered queen is used, or the brood nest becomes congested with nectar and pollen, the bees are likely to swarm.  If there is more than a deep and a medium below the comb honey super, the bees will pack the space with so much nectar that often the flow will be over before the bees have to draw foundation to make comb honey.
  
That is the short version and, as I said, it is too short.  A more comprehensive description was published in the May, 1999, issue of Bee Culture and for those interested in reproduced below.
  
In 2001 I accidentally discovered another method that may be the simplest and best of all.  The description is too long to for this format, but watch this winters Bee Culture for a complete article.
  
  
PROFITABLE COMB HONEY  
by Lloyd Spear  
Not long ago I received a letter from a new beekeeper saying, "I really want to raise comb honey, as I cannot find where to purchase it in my area. My friend who has been a beekeeper for many years says that comb honey production is too complicated for a newcomer. Can you recommend any simple ways of producing comb honey?"  
I refrained from comment on the advice she had been given, but proceeded to give what I hope was advice that was more useful. I told her that in my opinion, newcomers to beekeeping should only produce comb honey as, next to joining an active bee club, it is the best way to learn beekeeping, and saves a lot of money otherwise spent on equipment. As George Imirie, the nuclear scientist and Master Beekeeper, recently wrote me, "I recommend that new beekeepers produce comb honey as it is guaranteed to provide the experience necessary to become a beekeeper, rather than a beehaver."  
In this series of articles, I will outline the relatively simple methods both commercial beekeepers and I use to produce and sell thousands of sections of comb honey. Last month I commented on the different types of comb honey and how to prepare the equipment for producing round sections and cut comb honey. The article concluded by advising beekeepers to treat for Varroa and American Foulbrood, according to label instructions, when the pussy willows, red maples and skunk cabbage bloom. This month I will continue with spring and early summer management of bee hives for comb honey production.  
If you can get to your beehives without becoming mired in snow or mud, treatment for Varroa and American Foulbrood can be done several weeks before the early blooms mentioned above. In fact, it may even be beneficial to treat earlier as the mite populations will be lower. Regardless, in the coldest parts of the country, the queens will have started laying in January and a strong hive will have a good supply of young bees by early bloom. As comb honey can only be produced on very strong hives, the number of bees in the hive at the time of red maple and pussy willow bloom is very important. I call this time of the year 'spring bloom'.  
In mid and late winter the hive will raise brood by using the pollen stores from the previous fall. When spring pollen starts to come in the hive is spurred to significantly boost brood production. In order to support a major increase in brood, there must be a good population of forager bees to collect the pollen. These are the hives you want to produce comb honey. Lift the cover and look at your hives at the start of the spring bloom. Without moving them, look down at the top of the frames to see how many are occupied with bees. If four or more frames are covered with bees, you have a strong hive for the time of year. Three frames are ok, but questionable, and two or fewer frames with bees is a hive that will not amount to anything for the current year. Later, I will discuss swarm control in detail, but this time of year is when you first consider plans to control swarming. How old are the queens in your strong hives? If you replaced queens the previous fall, you can successfully use them for comb honey production. If not, they almost certainly will swarm before producing comb honey, and will need to be replaced before the major flow in your area. If the queens in the strong hives are more than six months old, immediately order new queens. Get them marked, so you can easily tell their age. Be certain they will arrive before your major flow, and introduce them as outlined below.  
However, if your bees have overwintered in two deeps or more than three mediums, looking at the frames in the top box does not tell you the whole story, as there are likely to be bees in the hive bodies below. (For an article on overwintering in a deep and a medium see the article "Comb Honey" in the May, 1998 issue of Bee Culture.) This is going to force you to do some lifting. With your hive tool, lightly crack the back and each side of the top hive body (if a deep) or the second hive body (if more than 3 mediums are used). Puff a little smoke in. Tip up the top hive body(s) just enough to look inside. Add however number of frames with bees you see in the lower super to those visible in the top super, to determine how many total frames are covered with bees. If you have a hive with only three frames of bees, you might be able to make that into a productive hive if you can find another hive with a strong five or, hopefully, six frames with bees. From such a hive carefully lift out a frame with brood and brush off the bees. (A bee brush is invaluable for this, but you can gently use a cloth if necessary and later in the spring, you can use a bunch of grass.) Insert that frame in the hive that only has three frames of bees, and replace it with an empty frame from that hive.  
That single frame of brood will give the three-frame hive another 2,000 or more bees. If the queen is good, and that is questionable since the hive is not as strong as others are, the frame should let her catch up with the other hives. This procedure is known as equalizing your hives. Put a rock or something on top of this hive to mark it (or better enter this information in your record book) and check in another two weeks. If you do not see four frames with bees at that time, this hive will still not be capable of producing comb honey this year.  
What do you do with the hive with only two frames of bees, or the three-frame hive that couldn't catch up? If you want to increase the number of hives you have, use the drawn frames to make up nucs. Of course, you will have to order new queens to put in those nucs. If you don't want to increase your number of hives, just replace the queen in those hives. Order your new queen, and two days before she is expected remove the old queen. (If the new queen is late so you removed the old queen 3-4 days before she arrived, that is not a problem.) Take the cork out of the candy end of the queen cage, and place that end up in between two frames in the hive. Have the screen facing out and not buried in a comb. Leave the workers in the cage. Spray the bees with a 1:1 sugar/water mixture, and close up the hive. Go back in a week, and your new queen will almost certainly be out of the cage. If she is not, release her. Take the cage out and close up the hive without looking for the queen or for eggs. Go back in another week and look at a center frame. If you see eggs or young larvae, your queen is ok and you need not look further.  
If you ordered queens to replace the older queens in your strong hives, or to make up nucs for increasing your number of hives, you will need additional bees to stock the nucs. Rather than introduce new queens to strong hives and risk them being killed, I first introduce them to nucs and suggest the same to you.  
Two days before your new queens are to arrive, take one or two frames (how many doesn't make a difference) of sealed brood from each of your strong hives, shaking or brushing all the bees back into the hives the frames came from. Put four of these above a queen excluder on top of one of the strong hives. Bees from the hive below will come up through the excluder to keep the brood warm. The next day put one frame of sealed brood and the shaken bees from another frame, into a nuc. The nuc should also contain at least one frame of pollen and one frame of capped honey. Cover the nuc, screen the entrance, and set it aside to wait for the new queen to arrive. The entrances are screened to prevent field bees from returning to their original hive. You will have used two of the four frames to make two nucs. If you wish, you can leave the remaining two frames (from which you shook the bees into the nuc) above the excluder and make up another nuc the next day. Otherwise, put the brood back into strong hives.  
Introduce the queens to these nucs as outlined above. After at least three days and no more than seven days, remove the screens from the entrances.  
If you overwintered in two deeps, about two weeks after red maples bloom you should reverse the hive bodies. This puts the brood on the bottom and, more important, puts lots of empty frames on the top where the queen likes to lay and the bees prefer to store incoming nectar and pollen. These empty frames stimulate more brood raising. You should continue to reverse the hive bodies every two weeks until approximately two weeks before dandelion bloom in your area. At this time, swarm control has to begin.  
For successful, simple, swarm control two elements are needed. The first is young queens. With one exception, all commercial producers of comb honey that I know use current year, spring-raised, queens to produce comb honey. The sole exception uses queens produced the preceding fall. For reasons not completely understood, older queens are more likely to swarm than younger queens are. In fact, a 1985 study in Israel documented that queens 20 months old (previous year queens) are seven times more likely to swarm than queens that were seven months old (fall raised queens)! The second element for successful swarm control is adequate honey storage room. This is somewhat difficult in comb honey production as the bees must have limited access to drawn comb or they will not build the comb necessary for comb honey.  
Approximately two weeks before dandelion bloom, (or about May 1 in upstate New York and areas with a similar climate), I put two Ross Round™ supers on each hive if I am going to use the hive for circular sections. If I am going to produce cut comb, I put one Ross Round™ super next to the brood nest and the cut comb super on top of that. Now the bees will not use these supers for at least another two weeks, or until dandelion bloom and are not likely to use them for another four weeks until the Black Locust bloom. However, the extra space seems to reassure the bees and I believe that putting the supers on early is a key to swarm control. In case you are wondering, I do not use queen excluders.  
I replace my queens in the spring, and order them for delivery so I can put them in nucs about April 15. About May 8, before the dandelion bloom, I carry my three frame nucs to my strong hives. I open the strong hives, find the frame with the queen, and set it aside. I then take out two more frames, preferably one of honey and one of pollen, and set those aside. I then spray the bees in the strong hive and in the nuc with sugar water, and put the frames from the nuc into the strong hive, keeping them together. The sugar water spray confuses the bees and masks the pheromones and the new queen and her attendants are accepted without fighting. The old queen and the three frames can either be put into a nuc for sale, or used to strengthen a weak hive. If sold as a nuc, the buyer should understand the age of the queen, but she is not likely to swarm if given new foundation or empty, drawn foundation in a full size new hive.  
Beginning with dandelion bloom, reduce your hive to one body if over wintered in two deeps. If over wintered in three mediums, reduce to two mediums. If over wintered in a deep and a medium, you can leave as is, but be certain the deep is on top of the medium, as the queen prefers to lay there. When reducing the brood nest, be certain the bees have at least six frames of brood, and seven is better. The remaining frames should contain pollen and honey. If you have more than seven frames of brood between the two hive bodies, place the extra brood in a nuc or start a new hive with the extra brood from several hives.  
Beginning with the dandelion bloom, you need to check weekly for signs of swarming, but this will usually take less than a minute a hive. To look for signs of swarming, tip the brood nest forward and look for swarm cells along the bottom of the frames. If you do not see any, it is likely that there are none otherwise in the hive, and you can go on to the next hive. However, if even one is seen you will have to take every frame out of the hive, shake the bees, and destroy the queen cells. Even with young queens, perhaps one in ten hives will build cells. As I am pulling out frames in hives where I see queen cells, I check to see how much space is available for brood. In a nine-frame deep hive body I want seven frames to have approximately 75% of the cells available for brood. This means that there will be brood or eggs in 75% of the area, or the cells will be empty. If more than two frames are plugged with honey and pollen I take the extra frames out and replace them with an empty frame filled with drawn cells or a frame of foundation.  
Usually hives that started queen cells will stop after cutting out the cells a time or two. However, some are stubborn and my rule is that I will cut cells three times (usually meaning three consecutive weeks). If they build cells a fourth time, I will either break down the hive, kill the queen, and use the frames elsewhere, or cut out the cells once more and move the hive at least 25 feet and face the entrance in a different direction. The move and change in entrance direction will cause the hive to lose its work force and they will drift to nearby hives. The population will be sufficiently reduced that the hive will not swarm, but it also will not be useful for production of comb honey. It is possible to have such a hive fill a super or two of drawn combs, if that is your wish. As a rule, if I am going to see queen cells it is in June and thereafter it is unusual.  
In summary, your swarm control is a young queen, preferably one raised in the current year, weekly checking for swarm cells, and cutting out those you find. That's it.  
If you're thinking about shook swarming, padgening, and the Killion system - but feel these are complicated, time consuming, but necessary to prevent swarming . . . well, they are very time consuming, require exact attention to detail, and work extremely well when done by an expert. In fact, they can be interesting to do Richard Taylor's 1996 Comb Honey Book, has exact descriptions of how to do the manipulations. However, the procedures I outlined are those used by commercial beekeepers to produce comb honey. They do not have the time to spend on detailed manipulations and they, and I, use the procedures as outlined.  
I used to use bait sections and frames in the supers, but no longer do so as I do not think it makes a difference. The bees will draw the comb when the flow is strong enough as they need to because they have run out of storage space adjacent to the brood frames. When I am doing my weekly check for swarm cells I look down at the super frames from above to see if the foundation is being drawn and nectar stored. When the super next to the brood nest is 75% or more filled, I reverse it with the super on top, placing that super next to the brood nest. When the super is moved up, I reverse it end-to-end so that the end that was toward the front of the hive is toward the back. Bees will usually first fill the comb next to the back of the hive, and reversing seems to speed up filling the entire section.  
If you had a cut comb super on top of the Ross Round™ super, the cut comb super is now next to the brood nest. As there are no queen excluders, you may be asking, "what will prevent the queen from coming up into the cut comb super and raising brood"? Of course, this question applies equally to the Ross Round™ supers.  
Management of hives with queen excluders is a technique I have never mastered. Whenever I have tried to use them the hive has swarmed, as I have never been successful in getting the bees to draw comb and store nectar above the excluder. While I am certain this is my failure, as many beekeepers successfully use them, I also know that many beekeepers feel that queen excluders are also "honey excluders". Fortunately, they are not necessary.  
In over 20 years of using Ross Round™ supers, I have very, very seldom had a queen destroy sections by laying eggs in them. Moreover, I have asked dozens of other beekeepers and their experience is the same. The most "damage" there has ever been is a few drone brood in a single row of cells immediately above the brood nest. And by a few, I mean less than a dozen! Something about all the plastic and the confined areas does not appeal to the queen and she will not lay in Ross Round™ supers. However, in normal circumstances queens will readily lay in cut comb supers, effectively ruining many sections.  
I believe Eugene Killion, a great comb honey producer from Illinois, first wrote of the best way to prevent queens from laying in cut comb supers. It is the essence of simplicity. First, have the bees complete at least 75% of a Ross Round™ super, then put the cut comb super below the Ross Round™ super. While the bees are drawing the comb and depositing nectar in the Ross Round™ super, they are also forming a ring of nectar and pollen around the brood nest. By the time the Ross Round™ super is 75% or so filled, the bees will have a space of about 2" on top of the brood nest filled with sealed honey and nectar. For reasons that are not clear, the queen does not cross that space, although there is a cut comb super above which would be ideal (from her viewpoint) for laying eggs.  
It is difficult to give very precise advice about whether more supers should be added after the initial two, as flows vary widely across the country. If you know you should have at least two weeks of flow remaining when your first super is 75% full, I would add another super, placing it on top of the super that is 75% full. When the super next to the brood nest is 75% full move it up and place the third super next to the brood nest. If you still have two weeks of flow remaining, add another super to the top. If you are not certain how much flow to expect after your first super is 75% full, my suggestion is to still add another super. The worst thing that can happen is that the super won't be needed and you can keep it for next year. That is far better than missing a full super of honey because you didn't have enough equipment.  
Carefully watch the supers you have moved up, and remove them as soon as they are fully capped. To determine if they are fully capped, look at the combs from the top, then tip up the super and look from the bottom. Remove when 95% or better are capped, as leaving the supers on the hive longer will cause the cappings to darken from the bees constantly walking on them...bees have dirty feet!  
With a strong hive, beekeepers can produce at least two supers of comb honey in most areas of the country. Two Ross Round supers have only about 36 pounds of honey, and a single cut comb super will have between 28-35 pounds of honey (depending on the depth of the super). While a great deal of nectar is required to make the wax for the combs, the equivalent for two supers is less than five pounds of honey. I am not in a good honey producing area, and always average three Ross Round™ supers a hive, or one Ross Round super and one of cut comb. Occasionally one of my hives will fill five or even six Ross Round supers, but that is unusual. In better honey producing areas, considerably higher averages are common. For example, Ray Nicholson of Wadena, Minnesota has been producing comb honey for 60 years and I understand that in some years his hives will average 144 circular sections. In 1998, he had one hive produce 216 sections!  
The next article will discuss harvesting, packaging and marketing the sections and preparing your hives for winter.  
Lloyd Spear is a round comb honey producer living in up-state New York. And yes, he manufactures Ross Round Supers.  
  
  


Lloyd
Lloyd Spear, Owner of Ross Rounds, Inc.
Manufacturer of round comb honey equipment and Sundance pollen traps