Honeycomb Systems of North America - A Brief History

hi i'm charles and i'm a beekeeper that loves old bee equipment the united states is home to many of the great innovations in modern beekeeping such as the langstroth hive and the bee smoker the innovations we'll discuss today are different systems for harvesting honeycomb honeycomb was once the key method of selling consuming honey throughout the thousands of years of beekeeping and wild hive scavenging the old squeeze and gravity method of turning honey into liquid could be time consuming and wasteful as beekeeping began to industrialize in the 1860s with the advent of framed hives and the honey extractor liquid honey could be produced with less labor in higher quantities yet there was still a demand for honeycomb that demand for honeycomb led to the first split square honeycomb systems which are more or less the split square system that we see today and all honeycomb systems are based off of a question that is asked often is why do people even buy honeycomb not everyone prefers honey in liquid form some of the world still prefers it in comb form some of the cultures just preferred that way liquid honey initially was considered an american thing back in the late 1800s second some of it is a textural preference there are folks that like to just take bits of honeycomb and chew on it like bubble gum and spit out the wax third some consumers desire honey to be in a more natural state having comb that is untouched by human hands and is in as close to a state as the bees had left it is preferable to them fourth honeycomb is gorgeous like liquid honey the way it is presented can make a great display item in your kitchen the aesthetics of honeycomb make it so appealing to culinary artisans and then finally cut comb is famous for making leaky containers i tend to only cut comb when i make chunk honey jars uh anywhere you put it it's going to leak there are three prominent comb systems that have been utilized in north america my research isn't here to recommend a particular product or determine which is best but we're going to discuss a few of the pros and cons of each the split square honeycomb system is the oldest of the honeycomb systems and goes as far back as the 1860s it even seems to slightly predate the invention of the honey extractor in 1865. there are different variations and sizes with different companies having their own slight variations with different names european beekeeping supply catalogs in france italy and britain call these little squares american squares and all 18 1880 publications in before i spoke with around a dozen beekeepers that have used them in their lifetimes of the dozen i could find on facebook reddit and forums none used them any longer of the five that responded to my follow-up questions they gave it up sometime between the 1970s and 1985. the sad truth is in north america the traditional split squares are going extinct the last major beekeeping equipment company to have them was kelly beekeeping which was bought out by mann lake mann lake has confirmed an email that they have discontinued the product and its refills so after 150 years split squares don't seem to be produced in north america any longer after discussions on beekeeping forms it appears that the old system is still used in the uk and eastern europe where different ones can be bought i believe it's a testament to the integrity of the system that it persisted for a century and a half and provided many of the fundamentals that led to the two other prominent systems in north america it was difficult to get my hands on this system however i was able to get it from a local distributor that still had about eight of them left in stock like the other two chrome systems the split comb system uses a shallow box and shallow foundation i love this envelope they sent ai root hasn't produced equipment in decades and i'm really tickled that this distributor was probably once an ai root distributor and probably has just a drawer full of these old envelopes that they're reusing so this is a very neat thing that came with it now you think after 150 years there would be some great instructions out there some great photos of how these go together maybe even a video i cannot find one for the life of me on youtube so i had to go with some vague instructions that came from the defunct kelly beekeeping on how to do this more or less you build and install these shelves along with these little wooden dividers now here's the part that everybody that's worked with this system hates assembling these boxes is very difficult you have to wet each and every bend so it doesn't snap and you know sometimes they snap anyways you'll see now getting the foundation to stay in place properly that was incredibly frustrating and i thought maybe i'm doing something wrong and spoke to the other folks that have utilized this system and each and every one of them said this was one of their key frustrations there were a few tools that tried to assist one that would use pressure to attach the foundation another above that would hold the boxes more predominantly together and make a wedge so you could drop the foundation in i'm embarrassed to say that i broke 5 out of 28 of these boxes however this is said to be a common occurrence with this system and to use painters tape as the best remedy for putting the boxes back together the next system we're going to discuss is the ross round this was invented by tom ross uh he was an architect world war ii veteran and a conservationist uh he only became a beekeeper in the 1970s when he invented the system the ross round company claims that they have a 90 percent market share of comb systems around the united states i have been using ross round boxes now for two seasons and this is a used box that i acquired i'm able to reuse a lot of what's in it much of the foundation is still good so i'll move on to these others that need me to open up each frame and put new foundation in there it uses shallow frame foundation here is an empty one it will simply snap open we will insert new rings for it and then we'll put the new shallow foundation right on top of it and then just close it up the plastic frames are highly reusable you just need to change out the plastic rings which end up going with each ross round disc assembly of this kit would take about 15 minutes without painting this is the hog half comb system which was created by dr john hogg he patented it in 1987. he was a chemist in the pharmaceutical industry and had over 50 years of experience in the beekeeping community he contributed more than 20 research articles to beekeeping uh before his death uh his last one was in 2006. there's a great video on youtube where he explains the hog half comb system with him and his family it's very heartwarming to watch i can see that it really was a labor of love for him the system came in two boxes and it's set up now that's it that's the whole system set up aside from painting the box the system has 32 individual squares called cassettes each is lined with a little bit of foundation and has a little gap so that the bees can come and go it really is the easiest setup system at harvest time you just pull the cassettes out and stick one of these lids on it and it's done during dr hogg's lifetime he billeted the hog half comb system as the least labor intensive comb honey system available and he was correct then and he's still correct now it truly is a marvelous work of modern engineering i have watched spirited debates on which is the best comb system i can only tell you which one isn't and that's the old split comb system it isn't because it wasn't innovative as it had a very lasting impact that inspired both the ross round and hog half comb systems it's just now outclassed and because of that it's went the way of the dodo between the hog half comb and the ross round it is a bit of a double-edged sword the ross round is cheaper to refill even with the additional pieces but the hog half comb offers more simplicity in setup and harvest i do appreciate that the ross round has more reusable parts but it has just as much if not more plastic waste as the hog half comb you really got to decide for yourself which is the right system for you now let's conclude with something fun we're in a new era for innovations in beekeeping thanks to 3d printing and cnc machines becoming more available to the general public i picked up this little honeycomb kit from running wild apiaries it came with simple instructions that allowed me to convert a deep frame into a honeycomb frame i love seeing creative new things like this we should always encourage new innovations instead of being stuck in our old ways beekeeping innovators all felt there was something more efficient that could be done to apply our trade tom preston once said that innovation is taking things that already exist and putting them together in a new way i'll leave you with that thought thank you you

Channel: Beeky Geek

Views: 2,988

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Id: 5pXkx4B5xIs

Length: 11min 46sec (706 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 16 2022