Cut Comb Honey Processing - 'How I Do' 

I found putting skewers as vertical guides in the super frames does a could of things: 1. Forces clean comb builds into the right sizes, 2. Takes stress off the blocks, 3. Reduces cracking.

Hello Mike those comb sure looked good. I did two shallow this year and in a new yard I got this year the bees put Mimosa in part of the frames. 🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️. Thanks for the video update. I am glad you had a great season.

Amezing

85 my butt. It looks like 184 on my screen. Can't wait to see ya at the next Hive Life my friend. Hopefully sooner.

the best Honey

Comb honey looks good

Awesome ❤

Mike thank you for the truth about honey retail price. I’ve tried cut comb no luck, only a waste of space for me. I believe I need more education. Thanks again.

Good Looking product 👌 💯

I recently subscribed so my question may be answered. All the comb producers always show how they process comb honey, but never show the complete process of setting up the hives and running the hives to produce comb honey. I've done comb honey for years, but I want to see others methods. I do the Juniper split which is a superior method to most others I've seen. But I'm alway happy to see other technigues.

Another great video Mike, look forward to seeing you in January. Kevin O

Another great informative video Mike. Thanks again.....

Ha Mike enjoyed the video might just try it next year, Thanks have a Blessed night

Great videos Mike!!!!

Looks like a sandwich of honey. Interesting video Mike. ✌🏻

Thanks Mike I’m planning on Ross Rounds next year. I hope they come out good. Yours looks great

Thank you for your tips on honeycomb. I love it so much, and it's so pretty and delicious. My friends get honeycomb gifts from me. I don't make enough to sell. Keep up your wonderfully informative videos.

Great video … love the ‘How I Do’ - thank you for sharing.

I would pay like $20 Australian for cut comb because I’ve never had it & I want it. I’m hoping 🤞🏻my local apiary has them. If you have to cut comb it’s a good idea to use a heated knife because it melts the wax where you cut & seals in the honey. You just get a cleaner result in the box & you’re not loosing honey from all the cells on the cut edges

Mike you do a great job with your comb honey. I saved two frames of comb honey this year they are still in the freezer, got to get them out and put them in the containers. I use the same containers from ML. I have trouble getting them drawn out, I used the thin surplus wax but they didn"t get them all of them capped over. Thanks for your videos you do a great job explaining how you do it. Thanks again from Southeast Georgia.

Going to try comb honey next. Another subject, storying suppers and frames what do you put between your boxes to keep wax moths away

Hi Mike I really do enjoy your videos. Everything explained clearly ' the way that you do bees' . Open , honest, friendly presentation. A pleasure. Thank you.

Thanks Mike. Great video.

Great video Mike!!

Nice video. Just a suggestion but I do hog half comb. The draw the cassettes Nd you can see all the way around them. There are 40 cassettes to a shallow box and you can order replacement cassettes. They look very nice. Thanks

Good video again MIke. I cut my comb up a couple of weeks ago just like you did. I entered a jar of chunk honey in the county fair and ended up with a Grand Champion ribbon. Yes, mine sells slow also but I sell it for $1.50 an ounce. I raised my price on the liquid honey to $9 a lb this year with all the increased costs of everything. Have a good week.

Beautiful job! I love the look of honeycomb in a jar 🏺. As usual you have done a great job. Thanks for sharing and letting me tag along :)

Thanks for this. I like buying comb honey on occasion because it's a fun thing to have. I share it with my boys. They are eight years apart so the youngest is just now growing into that age when a boy decides what is interesting. The oldest will be off to college, soon. I think I might go out and buy another comb to share with them while we talk about science and insects. Most of all, I like to tell them about the mysteries we have yet to solve and how fascinating it can be to add another block of knowledge on the wall of scientific discovery. Comb honey is such a great way to open a child's eyes to see the animals with whom we share this earth. Natural curiosity combined with the novel experiences can build traits that can last a lifetime.

Great video! Thanks for the tips.

BTW, you guys that need a good cheap freezer that will hold up to 3 deeps box and all or 5 shallows box and all, it has extra room over the compressor for 10 - 6&1/8 frames stood on end or you bee supplies ect., I bought mine 2.5 years ago when I got back into bees with some lazy Italians and knew nothing about SHB and they semi slimmed my bees which abscounded, got it from Lowe's in a scratch & dent sale for $150 , it measures 30.5" deep X 16.75" wide X 21" inside in the deep part and has more room over the compressor, it's a Hisense brand, but mine been outside on some old plywood and I cover the top with a 1/2" piece of white painted plywood since I bought it, lol it makes perfect work bench to assemble frames and boxes as well since it's close to my hives and underneath a water oak, ATM mine has about 250# of honey in brood deep frames, in a few days it'll have 320# after I pull enough to do the OAE treatments. Anyway I love it and works great.

Great video Mike and beautiful comb honey! I have the same problem as you with Ross Rounds. They are finicky and I struck out this year with them but still had some good traditional frames for cut comb.

WOW 😮 I have been selling my comb honey too cheap.... I got a entire Medium Super of 10 frames this year of comb honey.... I did the cassettes with comb honey and I did glass pint jars and 2 pound skep glass jars with large wedges of comb honey in them... I did freeze my frames, but I did not see any cracks...

Great video I'm thinking about adding comb honey to my product list. Thanks Mike for your videos always learning something new. God's blessings. 🐝😎

Very interesting as always, thanks for sharing your process.

I think the decals you are using on the comb honey containers are perfect. You get to see the majority of the comb, which to me is like dangling the carrot in front of the mule🍺🍺

Love the video and how genuine you are!

Beautiful. I have not done comb honey since the late seventies. Your video got me motivated to do some next year. I have a lot of customers ask for it. It draws a premium at sales. Thanks for the information. Great video. I’ll go watch your other video on it. God bless.

Enjoyed it Mike! I may jump into this next year, on a small scale.

Very nice presentation on comb honey. I’m A first year beekeeper looking for way to sell it next season. I think the story to go along with it would help sell the product, for me it would any way. Thanks Mike

I like how Mike does it . Always informative 👍

Just think, one cassette super and you have 40 combs and all ya have to do is put a lid and label on and done!! It’s genius !!

One of our club members uses medium boxes for comb honey. This way he can pick and chose where to cut to get perfect sections. The remainder goes into chunk honey. Nice video. Your comment about the SHB larva in the comb reminds me of an entry at the state fair a few years ago. About the second day on display larva started crawling around in the container. It disappeared very quickly. Have a great rest of the year.

Great video Mike. I'm gonna try that next year!

I’ve been melting wax to glue my foundation in for many years , I used to get so mad when I looked in a super and my foundation was all popped out of the frames , I started melting wax to glue the tops and bottoms in and it’s never been an issue again, you are the only other person I’ve heard of doing it 😄 Have you seen the hog cassette supers for making comb honey ??, that would probably be good for you , the square cassette is built by the bees to fit , and on harvest you take the 40 piece super out and put a lid cap on and your label and it’s done , so each super makes $600 nice and neat and it’s such an easy system especially when the bees do all the work 😀

That comb honey looks so good! I'm going to try it next year!

Hello "world famous Mike Barry!" I found out about you from Mr. Ed who I've been following for some time now. Great video. I really love comb honey and it's obviously worth the effort financially, but I'm fresh off a trip where I saw so much plastic on what used to be beautiful beaches that it made me sick. So I'm looking for ways to sell comb honey without using any plastic packaging. I was wondering how you sold your chunk honey ends. Do you drop them into pint jars and then fill the rest of the jar up with honey or ??? Thank you sir!

Heck yeah, Mike! Looking good! I've been doing chunk honey, but need to try this next year. Thanks for video!

I wonder if it could be moisture causing it to crack in the freezer. There's a decent difference in 12% to 18% moisture. I've only ever done ross rounds with pretty good success. But hopefully you have a productive year in the bee yard.

I have a how I do cut comb video from a couple years. That was before I learned about draining the cut comb. Our methods are almost identical now. I've got some 2oz mini-cups with lids from the Dollar Tree store. Plans are to sell samples for a couple bucks. I tried the Ross Rounds this year from Hungry Bear Farm Bee Supplies... Total bust... Maybee next year... I was in Hungry Bear last week and they had several boxes/pallets of Ross Rounds sitting there to bee packaged up. So I know it's possible to get Ross Rounds full of comb. Maybee next year... I dropped the clamshell after the ants got into them. I use a 12oz Dart container now. Closes tighter and has a tamper evident feature. My favorite question: Did you make the honey? My answer: No! The bees did!

Great video, I've been debating on comb honey, but this year I started getting asked about it so I think I may pick up a shallow to start doing it next year.

Mike I tried the way you do ( cold and the way you cut and yes it cracked.). Try room temp ,and do the short cuts first ( dividing the square and release the stress ) and then do the 2 long cuts , to completely released from the frame . And No Crakes!

Mike, great video as always. Thanks for sharing and for your transparency on pricing. It’s always interesting to hear what other beekeepers charge for their honey.

Nice video, I've been thinking about trying cut comb next year. How you do it might be close to home I try it👍👍👍

Had my first honey harvest this year and have been getting a lot of requests for combed honey. I will be doing this next year using mediums. I didn’t even think about freezing them. I’m glad you mentioned that. Thank you for video.

I use shallows and just let the bees draw them out usually they do pretty good on them and they are all uniform in size and not fat combs . Some good looking stuff you got there. ❤️🐝

The other Mike would be proud

Evening Mike, looks like you have a nice day. Bought me some shallow frames to try and make some cut comb but never got around to building the box for them. Make more money off premium products but they sell slower, always trade offs in keeping bees. I wonder could it be a higher moisture content causes expansion of the liquid in the cells/combs causing the cracking? I don't remember was your honey wetter? That's how I ate honey as a kid of the farm, gona try and give chunk honey for Christmas this year. Ty for sharing Mike, Blessed Days...

Hi Mike, Thank you for your presenting the comb honey process. This is my second year of beekeeping in Canada. I did a one shallow box of comb honey this summer using queen excluder to avoid having brood in it, the result was very good. I like to know the benefit of freezing the comb before or after the cutting and whether it affect the quality of honey.

Comb honey got to be the way to sell honey in little wooden boxes back when settles first brought bees to America because they had people who cook down various syrups and claim it to be honey, so in the comb was proof of being genuine honey, it always commanded a premium price, then the women of the day decided it should be very clean looking and pretty, thus honey show contests at fairs and church socials began and the winners honey would sell for top price for a while. Micheal Palmers video on making winning comb honey is kinda funny, he tells a story of how he had to lick off a tiny leaking cell 30 minutes before the judging to win. He tells how hard it is to make top quality comb honey anymore in the Champlain Valley of Vermont. Great 👍👍👌 video Mr Mike as usual, very informative and helpful. I could probably pull the top box off my swarm hive add a QE and make shallow of cotton honey which is pretty and unique, but I'm about kill some mites, with Randy Oliver's OAE sponge method at 75g of OA per 20 frame double deep, since the OXAVAP vaporizer I bought is a f@#king joke and I'm not willing to spew hot liquid acid all over my bees and brood chambers, I ordered a dozen Swedish sponges off Amazon, they came, open the package sez made in China I'm laughing thinking WTF, I cut enough to do all my hives @ 75g per 10 frames of brood which is 450g of OA & 450g/ml of vegetable glycerin heated and stirring to 150f or it turns clear, all the while I'm thinking no way in h#ll will them swedish dish towel sponges absorb this much liquid, but I did it like the videos said, only my candy thermometer read 125f when it turned clear and only had a LOCK&LOCK made in china 1.9 L plastic rectangular container to pour the liquid solution over the cut in half sponges to cool, to my total amazement they absorb it all and 12 hours later were dry to the touch, now for step 2 is pulling out 3 frames of capped honey each over the brood nest and placing these sponges 2 each on the top bars and adding back empty foundation, to carry them thru the rest of the cotton and goldenrod flow. I'll be checking on them every few days to see how it goes, these GA Cotton-mouth bees might get a logging chain and drag it out on the ground in front of the hives and cuss me for putting it in their houses, but if they don't it'll be there for 60 days.

Mike, your comb honey looks great! I’m the type person that would love to get the ones with the cracks at a discount because it’s really going to have cracks in it when I pop a bite into my big mouth and start chewing! lol I didn’t produce any comb honey this year although I did last year. One of my friends gave me a jar of her chunk honey and it’s very good. I don’t think I’ve ever eaten any bad honey. The worst that I’ve ever had was just wonderful. lol. I’m sure a bite with SHB larvae in it would not be good! Like I told you before, if you have to come my way for anything and still have some comb honey, I want to buy some. I don’t think shipping comb honey would be a good idea unless it was packed frozen in the appropriate package and that gets too expensive. Thanks for the great video telling us how we need to cut and package comb honey. lol

Looks great. Could you cut and package then freeze?

The first thing is the bees have to rebuild the wax before they can install the honeycomb

Great Not how to video! How many ounces do you put on your label? Thanks and Bee Amazing!

🛫📖🛬 Hi Brother Mike, Always interesting to follow you and I always get a blessing. My plans on doing some comb in the jars this year didn't come to "bee"🐝. Maybe next year ❓ Thanks for all your hard work that we get to glean off of, Bro. What is the brand of Bee suit that you use and is it the breathable type ❓ BTW: The other day I tried to do a full Hive inspection without a Bee Suit; Will not try that again! Those little girls didn't like me tearing their house apart and Soo; They gave me my baptism in beekeeping. Approx: 30 Stings and in some very tender areas at that! 🐝 Have you ever harvested in the mason jars in your supers. How much would you charge for the small and large jars? GOD Bless 📖🛐✈️🐆🐝

Great Video Mike!, Do you use starter strips along the top of your frames?

Gloves would bee a good idea when handling cut comb, people like untouched comb honey, just thinking out loud.

Hey Mike. You said that u freeze the comb honey in the frames before you cut and package. Do you worry about condensation when you are thawing It out?

Those look great, Mike! I wonder if you can tell me two things about your comb sections. What is the median weight on those sections and what is the measurement on those that fit into those containers so nicely? I pack around 500 sections each season and those containers look really nice. I'll have to check on the cost of those. Thanks!

Hogg system looking better I think.

Great video Mike. My cut comb didn't turn out to good. This was my first try. Must not have done it right. I put wax starter strips in shallow frames and boxes. I got a few frames about 3/4s capped and not drawn all the way to the sides and a few capped in the center but not all around. Some may be capped partly on one side but not the other. I need some training on comb honey production. Is it ok to make chunk honey out of the ones that have honey in them but not capped. Some are just drawn comb and no honey in them. I guess they are headed for the wax melter.

Where do you get your containers? Haven’t been able to find any with those dimensions.

Where do you get your comb honey containers. I Haven't been able to find them

Trying next year also. East of Dallas here. Horse country, not sure if I have enough of a flow for it. Mike can you ship, if so PM me and I`ll send the money for a slab of it.

Is it just me or would it be vastly easier to do that first cut if it wasn't laying flat against that other frame that's causing obvious interactions between the knife blade and the lower metal pieces. Just go vertical with it slice slice slice slice again voila you're done.

Is this spring or June honey?

It isn't a novelty to me. Comb honey tastes the best. Spun honey out of an extractor doesn't taste as good. I have to pay $16.99 for a 1lb square where I am. I'd buy a frame at a time if I could.

I have no luck on comb bees wont help it all cris cross

but doesnt it take a lot of honey to make comb?

The end of the day how is cheating how times money if you put cider vinegar in the sole under the hive and with a cover of plastic the hive battles can’t reproduce

If we only knew the ugly truth about our food we get in the market we my not eat it so willingly.

Use gloves