Welcome - Explore my Blog

I've been keeping this blog for all of my beekeeping years and I am beginning my 19th year of beekeeping in April 2024. Now there are more than 1300 posts on this blog. Please use the search bar below to search the blog for other posts on a subject in which you are interested. You can also click on the "label" at the end of a post and all posts with that label will show up. At the very bottom of this page is a list of all the labels I've used.

Even if you find one post on the subject, I've posted a lot on basic beekeeping skills like installing bees, harvesting honey, inspecting the hive, etc. so be sure to search for more once you've found a topic of interest to you. And watch the useful videos and slide shows on the sidebar. All of them have captions. Please share posts of interest via Facebook, Pinterest, etc.

I began this blog to chronicle my beekeeping experiences. I have read lots of beekeeping books, but nothing takes the place of either hands-on experience with an experienced beekeeper or good pictures of the process. I want people to have a clearer picture of what to expect in their beekeeping so I post pictures and write about my beekeeping saga here.Master Beekeeper Enjoy with me as I learn and grow as a beekeeper.

Need help with an Atlanta area swarm? Visit Found a Swarm? Call a Beekeeper. ‪(404) 482-1848‬

Want to Pin this post?

Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Cut comb Lessons Learned from Last Year

Last year I cut comb, drained it, boxed it, froze the honey in the boxes, thawed it and found that honey oozed out around the edges of the comb as it thawed.

This year I cut it; drained it; put the draining rack and honey into the freezer overnight; removed the draining rack and honey from the freezer and thawed them; and THEN boxed it. This year's honey doesn't have liquid honey oozing out the bottom.

Below you can see the difference in 2008 honey on the left and 2007 honey on the right.

Here are six dry packed boxes of cut comb honey. The honey is earlier honey than last year and is lighter. Last year I made cut comb from the dark honey made by my bees in July.

Here's a close-up of the ooze from last year's thaw post the overnight in the freezer.

Here are my last two boxes from 2007 stacked up against the lighter boxed honey from 2008. You can really see the difference.

Beekeeping is all about learning new things every year.
Posted by Picasa

6 comments:

  1. Anonymous12:42 AM

    Beautiful! The difference in color is so interesting. It looks great in these plastic containers.

    Just today I worked on frames for my honey supers ~ I'm in Anchorage, Alaska & getting ready to put the supers on so I really appreciate all your expertise!

    Thanks for sharing! Tam

    ReplyDelete
  2. Your comb looks thicker than what I have gotten. How many frames are you putting in a box?

    ReplyDelete
  3. These combs came out of 10 frames boxes with 10 frames in the box. I haven't harvested from any of my 8 frame box hives yet.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I don't think it should make a difference in thickness of comb but FWIW the 2008 comb came from medium boxes. The 2007 was in shallow boxes.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Linda, just found your blog today, and it is a treasure trove of information. Thank-you for your work and detailed posts. You may have addressed this following question, and I will try to find it on the blog. I'm wondering how you are getting the bees to keep the comb so nicely in the frames if there is no foundation? I'd like to do this on my hives, too. Do you have to alternate foundation-less frames w/ foundationed frames, to "force" them to keep things in order? Thanks again, Shane.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Hi Linda,

    You mentioned that when you used the brushy mountain comb honey boxes they didn't close tightly. Have you found a favorite comb honey box? Dadant has them for a good pribe, so I wonder if you've tried theirs.

    ReplyDelete

Pin this post

LinkWithin

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...