Bees harvesting equipment

Comb Honey

Typically i am maybe not shy about saying things my personal means, but Richard Taylor stated this very well, i shall not even attempt to fare better. To get more of his wisdom have a look at "The Comb Honey Book".

Richard Taylor on Comb Honey:

"a brush honey beekeeper actually requires, in addition to their bees together with usual apiary equipment and resources, only 1 various other thing, and that is a pocket knife. The afternoon you choose to go into making extracted honey, on the other hand, you have to start to believe not only of an extractor, which is a pricey device used only a comparatively minute area of the 12 months, but in addition of uncapping equipment, strainers, deciding tanks, wax melters, bottle-filling gear, pails and utensils galore and unlimited things. Besides this you really must have a location to store supers of combs, susceptible to harm by moths and rats and, given the nature of beeswax, extremely susceptible to destruction by fire. But still more: You must start to believe regarding another building, particularly, a honey residence, suitably constructed, provided with power, and equipped.

"All this work appears obvious enough, but time after time I have seen beginner beekeepers, as soon as they'd built their particular apiaries to a half-dozen or more hives, start to shop around for an extractor. It is like one had been to ascertain a small yard because of the kitchen area home, and simultaneously start to look for a tractor to till it with. Unless then, you've got, or plan eventually having, possibly fifty or even more colonies of bees, you should attempt to resist looking in bee catalogs during the extractors and other enchanting and attractive tools that are offered and rather look with renewed fondness at your small pocket-knife, therefore symbolic of ease of use that's the level each and every truly good life."

Expense of earning wax

Richard Taylor on cost of creating wax:

"The opinion of experts used to be your production of beeswax in a colony needed great quantities of nectar which, because it ended up being turned into wax, could not be converted into honey. Until very recently it absolutely was thought that bees could keep seven pounds of honey for every pound of beeswax that they needed to manufacture for the building of these combs-a figure which appears never to happen given any medical basis, and that is in any case very truly wrong. The widespread view that if the combs were used over and over, through the use of the honey extractor, then the bees would be saved the trouble of building them and could convert the nectar thus saved into honey, was only minimally correct. A powerful colony of bees is going to make virtually just as much brush honey as extracted honey on a very good honey flow. The main advantage of the extractor, in increasing harvests, usually honey stored from minor flows, or gathered because of the bees over several weeks associated with summertime, can easily be extracted, but comb honey can't be quickly created under those problems."-Richard Taylor, The Comb Honey Book

Doolittle's opinion:

"Again, at all times of much yield of honey, the bees secrete wax whether any combs are made or otherwise not; and when the parts are typical given basis, while the hive filled up with comb, this wax is lost if not the building blocks provided is lost; get it which way you be sure to...To show that I am not alone inside matter about the waste of wax, i must estimate from 2 or 3 of your best apiarists; the very first is Prof. Cook, with no one will state that he's not good expert. he states on web page 166 of the latest edition of their handbook 'But I find upon evaluation the bees, even most old, while collecting, in honey period, yield within the wax machines just like those inside the hive. During the active storing of the past period, specially when comb-building was at fast development, i discovered that virtually every bee taken from the flowers included wax scales of different size, into the wax pouches.' "it is my experience during "active saving, " as well as the wax scales should be on the bees likewise whether they tend to be furnished with foundation or otherwise not; and I also can arrive at no other summary than that arrived at by Mr. S.J. Youngman, as he says on page 108: 'The bees secrete wax during a honey flow, whether or not they tend to be building comb or perhaps not; if they may not be used in building brush, this wax is most definitely lost.' "Once more on page 93, of the United states Apiculturist, Mr. G.W. Demaree says: 'Observation has actually convinced me personally that swarms leave the mother or father colony better ready to develop brush than they previously tend to be under various other situations; hence if they're banned to utilize this built up force, by explanation of experiencing full sheets of basis at hand to work out, there'll fundamentally be some loss; and I also genuinely believe that whenever matter is computed, to get the loss and gain the effect will show your foundation truly costs the apiarist twice just what he actually covers it in cash'...Now, i've frequently noticed, and especially in looking straight back throughout the last 12 months, after reading Mr. Mitchell's "Mistaken Economy, " that swarms hived in Summer would fill their particular hives filled with nice straight worker combs, in addition to combs would be filled with brood through the first two days after hiving; while a colony maybe not casting a swarm wouldn't make an increase of just one lb of honey; nor would a swarm having a full pair of combs given them, or even the frames filled up with foundation, be a whit better off at the end of fourteen days. Mr. P.H. Elwood has actually mentioned the same thing; hence proving that concept so it takes 20 weight of honey to make one-pound of comb, will likely not hold good in instances where bees need comb and now have free access to pollen. As most of my comb is made today, the reader will readily observe that the combs are priced at myself but little, save the looking after the colony a couple of times while creating brush, which will be far less expensive than purchasing basis, or fussing with a foundation mill."-G.M. Doolittle ABJ Vol 20 No 18 pg 276

From Beeswax Production, Harvesting, Processing and goods, Coggshall and Morse pg 35

"Their particular amount of performance in wax manufacturing, which how many weight of honey or sugar syrup are required to create one pound of wax, isn't obvious. It is difficult to show this experimentally because plenty factors exist. The test most often reported is that by Whitcomb (1946). He fed four colonies a thin, dark, strong honey that he called unmarketable. The only fault that might be found with the test had been that the bees had no-cost trip, which was probably needed so they could void waste materials; it absolutely was claimed that no honey flow was at progress. The production of a pound of beeswax needed a mean of 8.4 weight of honey (range 6.66 to 8.80). Whitcomb found a tendency for wax production to become more efficient as time progressed. This also emphasizes that a project designed to determine the ratio of sugar to wax, or one made to create wax from a cheap way to obtain sugar, requires time for wax glands to build up and maybe for bees to-fall to the routine of both wax secretion and comb production."

The difficulty with all of the estimates on what it can take to create a lb of wax is they do not account for exactly how much honey that lb of wax will support

From Beeswax Production, Harvesting, Processing and goods, Coggshall and Morse pg 41

"a pound (0.4536 kg.) of beeswax, when made into brush, will hold 22 pounds (10 kg.) of honey. In an unsupported brush the stress...