Cut Comb Honey Processing - 'How I Do'

i am heading out to the honey house to do some comb honey cutting that's right i said i'd do a video showing you my comb honey that i got that's what i aim to do [Music] well hello there folks welcome to southeast louisiana on a balmy 85 degree fahrenheit day it's actually cool we've had a lot of rain had to work some bees this morning the last eight colonies in town went and put some hop guard on them and one got a guard because it began to rain on me i had it with me and i couldn't check queen right or anything so i just slapped it in there and called it they had some shims with me uh but it looked it's been thriving it's got a lot of bees in it been had a lot of bees in it been had yeah that's that's right been had a lot of bees in it so good to go all hives have been assessed all hives are queen right all right let's get in the honey house and i will show you how i cut my comb hunting what i got this year and i'll have to refer you to a video that i'm going to put up in this corner up here uh how i set up my boxes if i can find it because i didn't do one on how to set up my boxes let me tell you how that panned out i've been doing comb hunting about six years now yeah six years yeah cause i've been here five no i've been doing comb honey probably about seven years now and i do them in a shallow medium no that was a stupid statement a shallow box not a medium and so i learned that from a man 50-year beekeeper told my buddy that as we were talking with him and that's who i believe so i went with him so i do shallow boxes shallow frames and i use the ultra thin surplus foundation from man lake and you can cut it in strips and use the whole sheet and what i used to do is i did it in wedge type frames cut the wedge out nailed the wedge back in with the foundation in it wasn't wired foundation obviously it can't be so the wedges would hold it pretty good well after about four seasons kept using the same frames the wedges began to not hold it so good four or five seasons whatever but this i know two years ago two seasons ago and i think i have it on video they let go of the top and began to sag and they made some crazy combs i had a bust that year last year what i started doing was i put the foundations in and then i drip a little wax down in the grooves in about three spots on each side and that holds it into the top that way it doesn't sag it stays nice and straight pretty beautiful wax foundation and i put it on when the flow just begins to really hit hard and i put it one to two usually two supers above the lowest super because they don't use excluders well last year she went two supers up into that thing and hit four frames with brood and ruined it but i still got half a box this year we got a full box it's not the prettiest this year but it looks good i have tried ross rounds i've gotten maybe two boxes ever out of those after out of about five attempts this year i put it on just to make space i didn't even wasn't even worried about making ross rounds they filled a few of them but i just stuck it on because i was out of supers but uh those things man timing is everything with those ross rounds and strength of course to me the comb honey is just a little bit easier so all of that was said to tell you what i did when you if you look at that other video how i make the boxes i kind of changed my ways now i drop a little wax in the grooves to hold the foundation in i've got good success with comb money i make one box a year and uh let's go in and i'll tell you a little bit more about how that pans out monetarily now my brand new 24 microphone is gonna pick up the ac i'm sorry about that but i've got it on the dry setting keeping humidity down in here these are my comb honey frames i think they're a little bit loose but be careful they're not the prettiest this year got a little indentation but they're fat on that side and we're gonna cut these up in just a minute again these are shallow and um they're just a nice product it's just it's just a nice product to add to the honey table at the market people like it most of its novelty and out of this frame i'll get how many will i get four yeah cause there's 10 frames i can get 40 out of a box so i'll get four squares and then i'll get a strip that i'll cut and i'll make chunk honey in a jar with and those do sound good so let's talk candidly about the money involved with home honey again i do one box a year if i do one box a year and look i ca i barely and down here in the south i'm able to get 15 bucks for a three and a half by three and a half inch square of home honey i actually dropped it one year to 12 and sold it for two years at 12 a just wasn't people don't buy it that much so it is a slow seller for me but it does eventually all sell we went back to 15 and were able to sell it all last year and out of each frame i'll show you when i cut it i do get one strip that i can make chunk honey out of but let's not even count the chunk honey that the excess that i use and let's just count if i were to get 35 squares out of the 40 that i can get at 15 bucks a piece for one shallow super of comb hunting even though it sells slow it's 525 dollars that's pretty good all right so let's look at a liquid box a medium medium of nine frames you can get about three gallons but let's just say two and a half on a on a less full one so let's go with two and a half gallons at um and how many pounds that is and let's just see what i charge per pound so at 12 pounds per gallon that's what 30 gal 30 pounds 30 pounds at 8 bucks of and i sell mine for eight bucks a pound let's go times eight point 240 240 they will sell quicker now i'll sell 31 pound bottles in a month no problem probably so they'll move faster i'll get instant cash at 240 versus over 500 for the home honey so for me to throw one comb honey super on is not a bad deal that's the cold hard cash side of it so it pays for me to throw one super on there and again almost every year i get one i've had two years of unusable and then one year of a little bit of brood that is the first time last year ever got brewed in one so but even if you get half a box see i get 375 bucks still more than a 240 dollar super of liquid honey 240 maybe to 300 just depends there you go that's the old hard cash back up if you really want to get down to it i do have to pay for this hobby so i'll take the frame and now this one don't fit all the way but at least it's on the ends here and all i do is take i got this little serrated knife and cut the whole thing out now that i got some cracks i'm afraid we're going to have an issue with cracked cones and i'll explain why that is and what has happened but it's very disheartening and if that's the case i end up just making chunk honey out of it again i still make more money off of it but uh it's a little reduced from having the nice premium cut cone now these frames aren't premium because they're kind of cattywamp a little bit but it's a beautiful honey huh trying to cut out that that right there that bottom stuff all right then i take it and lift it out and there we have our nice comb honey now i freeze all of my comb honey prior to doing this and what i've noticed the last couple years it never happened before it's only happened recently where when i froze it it um in the frame had a lot of cracks and it didn't give me perfect squares ah that's frustrating because it kind of ruins it um but i've frozen it in the containers after i've cut it and it's been fine freezing why do you ask why am i freezing it well first of all honey is if you freeze it it won't crystallize it only crystallize refrigerated so you freeze it to kill any small hive beetle eggs that are on that frame those small hive beetles in the life cycle of a small hive beetle will lay eggs all in the cracks and crevices and any empty cones like those empty cells two to three days they'll hatch out and you'll have hybrid larvae to begin to eat through your hunting one good thing about dehumidifying a room is you bring that humidity down below 50 percent it desiccates those eggs and kills them well i go the extra mile and i freeze all my comb honey so sometimes i've i've frozen the frames in years past and never had a problem with them cracking last year i've seen it for the first time and again this year i don't know if it's maybe i had them lean a little bit and as they began to freeze i don't know the stress is on these have been frozen almost three weeks small high beetles will really ruin your uh honey business if you hand somebody a comb honey which begins to just have a bunch of hot beetle larvae well you would see it before you got to the market i'm sure but uh because two to three days and they're hatching out so by the time you bring it in they should be hatching out you don't want that that's why you freeze it that's the ugly truth that you don't hear everywhere about that but that that would uh never had it happen don't want it to happen all right let's measure these out we're going to cut them up and i'm going to show you how i cut them up how i measure them and what i put them in they make handy dandy cutters like this pierce makes a beautiful one that's heated and everything i do not use this to cut with i use this simply to measure i bought it to cut with it didn't work well everybody told me use hot water use warm water warm it cool it rinse it each time it just doesn't do that good for me i don't like it so what i do is i just simply go like this like this and again like this and one more time like this that's what i do yeah it's made for cutting but i can really just take this thing right go here as fast it just is smooth i'm just worried about the cracks i saw now you see this last piece left that will be my chunk honey that goes in my honey jar perfect piece for a pint jar perfect and that's what i do folks it's just that simple i always put the ugly side down because it'll go on the bottom because there's always you you put the uglier of the two sides down you see there's a crack right there i just saw it all right well we're all right for now so here's what i do next i just said in that last statement here's what i do next this is what mike does you know what i'm going to say guys those you've been with me forever i know you've only been with me a couple videos it's not a how-to video this is how i do video okay comb honey however you choose to do it your business well there's other videos out there other guys that do this exclusively they do tons of this stuff they're the experts not me i do one box a year this is what i do with it here to drain it because you want the presentation to look nice that is the nice thing about a ross round if you can time it out perfectly ross rounds are so handy man they're so nice because all you do is pop the frames apart trim the rings put the lid in the bottom on wrap it sticker it you're done no cutting no draining no trimming so we take the peaches that are cut they're draining i usually wouldn't have this far but my table is taken up and i set them here to drain because you want you don't want the bottom of your container completely full of honey it just doesn't look as good so drain them on these cookie sheets so what we have let's move this one over gotta have space between the drain and there you go um if we have a broken or busted frame or i did damage one frame with a hive tool the super went to fall and i grabbed it and had to hide through my hand and jammed it through there but i think it was enough it was on the edge where i could make chunk honey out of it but if that is the case if i have to salvage two or three squares i chop them up chunk honey make something out of it for sure even if you take a piece and just it's all cattywampused up you can take that and just cut it little pieces and put in small rubbermaid dishes and give it as samples or the kids like them at the markets always something to do with it do the same thing and i'm going slow you gotta cut a little bit faster like that i'm just i saw those cracks and i'm a little nervous about those cracks i want to be careful there's a crack right there i just saw it it's going right down there i just want to be careful with them i've never seen it like it did it last year this year i think i might have had them leaning too much there's a crack y'all can see that crack see that crack right there unfortunately it's on the end let's take the stress off of it i try i don't like that in there i gotta i need to cut that those empty cells out i don't like those those are not good bad appearance i think there's a crack all the way across that's the one i saw a minute oh yeah this whole thing is cracked up there it goes y'all see that no problem we'll still salvage three maybe so the end one is kind of cracked i can split the difference maybe but let's see what we can get out of it i know there's a crack right about here where it's gonna hit yeah see that one's not gonna make it's not gonna make cut it anyway and see what we got i want to move this over yeah i see it's crack on the back so this one and what i'll do with these little ones and also it's got some empty cells i'll actually knock a couple bucks off of those people i don't have a problem i like to really make sure i'm selling quality so if i have to knock a few bucks off to make it you know make up for something like that i will all right let's move this over oh man that we don't want i want you don't want the wet honey all over this i know that much i don't know how they judge home money but i know you wouldn't want that this one i'm going to try and cut it see what happens yeah it's broke so actually that'll be fine again i'll knock a buck or two off of that that's no problem i'll use the other one for some chunk honey and some novelty stuff that's what i'm gonna do now i'm gonna cut the rest of these i'm gonna put them on drain and i'll get back with you and see where we're at [Music] so the one i damaged with the hive tool when i jammed it through unfortunately it was on the very end that's where the hive tool jammed up in it the box went to fall over had in my hand reached up and the hive two went in the house just went up in the box this one cracked so that come off the edge so i got at least one deficient nasty looking one some of these i'm gonna have to trim you know they should be this size not this size trim a little bit off of course i reap the rewards of the scraps that's so good they're draining real well you see all the honey down the plate everything's coming down off the side that's what i want these are very cool still so it takes a while to drain so let's go ahead this stuff is drying for probably an hour now it's cool so it's not going to drain a lot but i'm already seeing the sides are a lot drier than they were and this is what i'm looking for you can see empty cells like this one especially on the sides now the problem is they're going to go out to the market in the warmth and they are going to drop some more but to get the most that we can out that's all we're doing here so they'll always have a little bit in the bottom now i just use the clamshells that you can buy at mann lake i think they're cn 444 is their item number not trying to advertise for man late you know necessarily but all i do is i put them in these i make sure i've got the best side nut and i've already done that i look at that side real quick but the best side is that one and they fit nice and tight right in there so it drops right in i don't like too much honey on the tops i got a little bit on this one i think it makes for a bad presentation personally but you just take this close and i actually have i gotta i'm gonna redesign my decals but what i have that's the decal i have it says comb honey on it i consider the hinge the top personally and i i try to run the you know you want i like the comb running across and then i just put the sticker on well i'm trying to do this one-handed and really i do this later but i'll do them all at once just stick it on there and that's my presentation and i really think what sells these things helps when they just look pretty and they look just fascinating and um i like to explain to the people and this is true it's not a it's not a sales gimmick or tactic or anything um the honey in the comb for whatever reason i don't know if it's because of the stuff extracted gets into the oxygen or i don't know but what i know is there's something about that burst of flavor when you bite into that little piece of cone and i usually keep one of the jagged ones i'll probably keep as a sampler like i was telling you earlier some of the small pieces that can't be used just use them as samples and people taste it and they want to take it home with them i explained to them how you can take a butter knife and and just take it and run it into that thing wax it all and spread it over across hot toast wax and everything and just eat that thing up and it's so delicious you can just chew on it you can swallow like you don't have to follow the wax i explained i use these to explain to them about the cappings when they ask about our candles i show them the bar of wax that we sell or the candles and i say all right you see these white cappings we cut those off and we save them you know so it's it's a neat little thing to have at your table and it's not too much to just throw one shallow super on your colony and get yourself 20 to 40 blocks however good they do that year i think this year we probably get 30 at least i would hope depends how many crack um only one has cracked badly the rest seem to be fine so far i've got 16 so far and i haven't even gotten halfway through the box so home honey is a it's a neat thing to make it's fun to make i think it goes back to traditional i like to explain to people about the older older generations that a lot of them this is how they ate their honey they ate their honey in the cone not everybody had extractors only the very big operations had them some people made them homemade some people crushed and strained a lot of people just had the wax and would cut it out and take and eat it so i like to explain that and people really enjoy at your honey table when you can talk about you know intelligently talk about what's been what where the honey came from what it's used for what how it was in the past how the bees made this how you made this you know it's just fun it's just another fun item for the table and then i box them all up like this and label them at the end okay i'm gonna wrap this up and uh at least box what i got for you [Music] well there we are folks that's a start that's a good start do i don't know maybe another two or three frames getting packaged up drained and all that and i'll finish the rest tomorrow some of you have asked so there you go i didn't do the video this year putting the box together i think i did it last year i think i put it in the length or in the top of the thing and if i did i'll put it in the description as well i've been using these frames for a long time so i'll take those out to the bee shed today out to the where the keep the super zack and i'll let them clean them out tomorrow while i'm going to church all right guys i appreciate all y'all watching appreciate all y'all support hope you like this video about comb honey and how i do comb honey if you didn't like it please don't forget to give it a thumbs up if you don't mind of course and i appreciate each and every one of you for watching this video hope to hear from you in the comments this is barry's best honey i'm mike and i do comb honey sometimes every now and again at least once a year y'all have a wonderful evening and may god bless you we'll see y'all later you

Channel: Mike Barry

Views: 11,293

Keywords: beekeeping, bee hives, queen bee, queen, swarm, comb, honeycomb, brood, honeybees, honey, hive stand, bee suit, veil, hive, hives, hive tool, smoker, pheromone, hive beetle, varroa, mite, honey harvest, honey extractor

Id: DQpjqUB7cVE

Length: 23min 39sec (1419 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 23 2022