Ross Round Honey In The Comb How to make comb honey with Ross-Rounds and Honey Bees!

so hello my name is frederick dunn and today i'm going to talk to you about how to make comb honey now i get asked this question a lot do i prefer hog halfs or ross rounds well these are ross rounds i'm going to show you how to put them together and i'm going to take you through the entire process including putting them on beehives and harvesting and packaging at the end it's an amazing thing these plastic things are an invention of tom ross shortly after world war ii in the united states it's a method for allowing the bees to make comb honey in prepackaged plastic rings these white plastic rings you get two of them in the kit i paid for this kit i bought it from betterbee.com full price no affiliation and now i'm going to walk you through it this is how they come with the plastic rings pre-installed actually when you first get the kit the kit comes with a wooden case around it now the foundation that goes in here is 100 beeswax it's edible different than foundation because as you can see my fingers through it it is very thin the whole point of it is to simply sandwich it between the ross rounds put the pieces together and hope that the honey bees will start to build their comb out from this foundation and it's using b space in other words these plastic guards on either side of these inserts will keep the bees from just drawing out the comb and connecting it to the next frame so it is very different and you have to get a frame that's made just for ross rounds or you're going to have to custom make your own because they don't match up i let it stick out beyond the plastic frame here but i'm going to bend it over later because i want the bees to use that as an enticement to start to work the frames and you can see that they key together in a very easy way you really don't need a lot of instruction to know how to do this the other thing is of course make sure your hands are clean and everything else but what's going to happen when you put it in the beehive the bees are going to lick it and sanitize every surface with their antibacterial properties as they always do so going in just make sure you have all clean new material there are four rots rounds per frame and they come in 8 frame or 10 frame because they match up with standard langstroth equipment now why on earth would you use a ross round comb honey system well for starters uh it saves you from creating cut comb yourself and the bees package it for you this is how the foundation comes again make sure you're sourcing this knowing that it's going to be used in ross rounds this is the wooden case that comes when you order the kit and i of course have finished that with three layers of exterior varnish and the inside has these spacers built in and then there's only one movable side panel and it's going to be held on with spring clips remember to fold over any extra foundation that's sticking up at the top or at the bottom because there isn't a lot of space above it or beneath it when you put this on a beehive pack them in nice and tight i'm going to put them all together and i'm going to put that spacer board in there and then i'm going to show you how to install the spring clips so we put the spring clips in here right on top of that protrusion of the frame which pushes them all together nice and snug without warping the wood this looks like it's going to last for many years and i'm going to walk you through it all this is not a quick video obviously it's going to go for about 30 minutes and that's because i'm gonna try to answer all the questions when you need to pull these out you just use your hive tool with the j hook on the end of it now when we go on the bee yard as with any honey harvesting piece of gear we want to look at the colony that's got the most production going on we also want them to have the resources necessary to get through winter here in the state of pennsylvania i have them with at least two boxes one deep one medium before i put anything else on the top box there is just a feeder shim so that's empty here's a colony that's nice and strong 10 frame colony it looks like a candidate for a ross round frame so just out here there is a nectar flow on so the bees are pretty friendly i'm not wearing a full bee suit just going to pull this apart and of course install the ross round frame now i didn't just put this on one hive by the way i like to go out and do several at a time there are 19 colonies in this apiary in north eastern united states the state of pennsylvania great lakes region 1300 feet above sea level and we're in agricultural zone hardiness four here we go just gonna put this one on here as with many of my other experiments i don't just do one because i don't want to be left with nothing in the end so i put on two eight frame size and two 10 frame size then i want to use a well worn in inner cover there because i want the bees to smell that propolis and burr comb that's in there and that will entice them to move up into this rouse round box it's that simple just wearing a veil today and that's it now they'll make their honey and the ross frowns now here's another one this is a flow hive two eight frame so it's much smaller and the dark hunter green colored box there is another ros round box it's the one that we're going to use to evaluate ross rounds and to give you a step-by-step demonstration of how to deal with them so this is on here we need to come and inspect now these were installed on june 28th and we're doing this check on september 8th also there's a rapid round feeder in here that has not been used that's on for winter use at the end of the year or early spring build up don't feed any supplemental syrups when you're going to harvest honey or in this case comb honey in ross rounds so it's just a placeholder for now and it plugs that hole so the bees can't get up there so gonna pull out the inner cover i like to use two hive tools for this process and i'm trying to pull it up nice and careful notice that i've changed my outfit a little bit there were some defensive guard bees out there in the apiary and we can see that the bees have put bur comb all over the top of this and that's good because they're working it they went right in there and we're going to show you first of all how to get your bees out of your ross round super so that you can start to process the comb honey that's in there we're going to need to use a bee escape but first let's get a close look at these bees and make sure that they're drawing out the comb i like to squirt them with sugar syrup with a little bit of honey bee healthy in it and notice i'm not squirting it on the raw surround frames i'm squirting it in that space down between because i'm trying to occupy the bees down below you may also notice i'm not using any smoke on hot days like this i'd much rather use sugar syrup and honey be healthy than smoke because it doesn't get the same reaction from the bees they stay calm and it doesn't stop them from producing and storing honey which is interesting and it's what we want them to do this time of year as you can see they're all very calm and if we look inside these white plastic rings we can see that they have drawn out their own honeycomb so these are looking pretty good they weren't completely capped on the outside frames but i felt like i needed to go ahead and do this video so we're going to pull this particular one a little prematurely the other three will remain on the highs right through september and we'll pull them off in the last week so remember now what we have to do is get them out of this super and the box underneath that minty green color hand painted by yours truly is also full of honey and comb and i tried to pull it off smooth but of course the problem snapped on me and i moved it too fast a couple of bees did bite the dust here on this and you'll notice too those center wooden frames there are better comb which i put in just to help them back in the beginning of the year they have lots of honey on this is an escape board pretty standard traditional wooden escape board bee escape is another thing it's called put it on like this they go down through the hole they find it difficult to navigate back through those triangular exits there and it will give us enough time before they learn their way around you don't want to leave one of those things on for a very long time we're going to have to leave it on for 24 hours to get the bees out of there so we can harvest our comb honey and of course lots of bees still up there even inside that wrap it around because it's empty trying not to chop up any bees here i don't want to hear the crackle of death when i close the boxes together or the center cover and that is a flow hive brood box on the bottom nothing else is flow related other than the stand so those things are interchangeable too you can use them for other stuff so i won't be putting a flow super on this box i'm only using it for this comb honey then the undercover feeder shim close it up leave it there hope they leave and just look at the outside temperature here 72 degrees this was september 6 so a couple days before we pulled it back off and uh we had light rain so we got into kind of a moderate dirt this summer not great because it kind of halted what they were doing at the beginning of the year which was really fantastic and even egg production was low from the queens so some of our numbers went down they did not fill things as quick as they did last year at this time and our flow supers by the way are doing extremely well they're 90 percent full and i'll have to drain those off also during the next week here before we start to shut them down in preparation for fall and winter so there's still some bees you'll notice on top there but not as much as we would have had to deal with if we just pulled this off in the beginning now if we were just pulling frames of honey we could pull it out frame by frame and shake the bees off but having the bee escape certainly helped they reduce those numbers by about 90 percent and then i just take that and put it in a shed darken everything up and leave one window open a source of light the bees will follow that source of light and leave the shed a few squirts of reward sugar syrup down there just so they know that the visit was a good one when i came out i'm gonna pull the escape off and of course i came out prepared with another box of drawn comb so the bees can continue to store their winter resources and look at all the bees that are underneath this bee escape i'm gonna have to put that down on the landing board so they can find their way back into the hive and they did that in about an hour's time to where the board was empty of bees so now we're just gonna put this medium super on here again i have three frames of better comb in there which is pre-drawn so they can go immediately into storing that we don't want them to hit a big neck or flow and swarm this time of year so by providing fully drawn cells we give them a place to put their resources more space to go back into because remember these bees are accustomed to having a box up there and as i said in the middle of a really good golden rod clover and asters are coming on nectar flow so just get this situated in the front here we don't want to just leave it on the side of the hive for example uh when they're leaning against the landing board they get the pheromone from the landing board bees and they walk right in there and they're good to go the other thing is i'm swapping out the cover now in preparation for winter putting a polystyrene insulated cover on which has seven times the insulation value of a wooden cover and of course don't forget to strap it down so now it's ready for whatever the weather throws at it we've had some storms come through but we are still way behind as far as rainfall goes this year this course is to be escaped leaning on the front just to show you all the bees underneath and see how they travel through and out now if we left that on for several days bees are smart eventually they figure out even those reverse angles and go back in now we're on the kitchen table all the bees are gone and it's the following morning and these are the ross rounds still in their frames and the other thing is i don't want to clean off this bur cone because i'm going to use these frames again we're just going to replace the foundation and we can put them right back on i think it's too late this year to start another hive but next year in the spring i will find another strong hive that i want to use for developing comb honey and we'll put these frames right back on with brand new white inserts so i just laid down newsprint on the table here double thing just so that i don't mess up my harvest table and we're going to pull the clips out of the sides there so we can start to pull these things out and see what we have so the bees really did go right after them other people i've heard reports from that they had zero luck with ross rounds i don't know why my bees do such a good job both with flow supers and ross rounds in this case this is my first year with comb honey like this in the past i would have just let them draw out their own foundation foundationless frames and then you have cut comb but this is interesting because the bees fill the space themselves look at all the problem sealant they did there and i'm also going to show you what to do with those that did not fill out the frames completely now these are some five tools that were sent to me by jeremy james who's a viewer and i really appreciate it these are made by the honeystead which is another youtube channel where they do a lot with bees i was really impressed with this finish i even looked it up and found out that this finish on these hive tools can handle depending on which one you get up to 1700 degrees so they sent me uh gold colored and copper colored here and again those are from jeremy james but they're made by the honeystart and the honeystead when they sent them to me also included some of their own honey so that was pretty cool and i really appreciate that and i'm going to set these hive tools aside and use them exclusively for my ross rounds and things like that so here we go this was obviously not finished so the ones on the outside there are a fail can't use them what you can do with those is put them back out let the bees clean them up and reclaim the honey that's in those cells there's nothing else really i would recommend doing with those the other thing is when you put your hive tool in between these plastic frames it's the first one that really needs that just be careful not to poke it into that capped honey now we can see this one here not capped all the way what do you do with that you give it to your friends and relatives that's what you do but the others look at the capping on that and then on the end again not usable so it's up to you feed that back make chunk honey with it use it yourself crush it drain it and of course get the water percentage nice and low now these are looking good those are mostly capped and the one on the end they're not awesome keep in mind i'm not a commercial beekeeper i'm not going to sell these to a local store or anything but i am going to have a pile of these this year these were the ones that i pulled earlier remember the rest are going to stay on the hives until they're finished out completely but i'm going to end up with a lot of ross rounds here and the interesting thing you may like to know also is that that flow hive to eight frame size that these were put on were saskatras b's they were installed this past spring as a package so this shows you how fast they built up what great wax workers they are and if you'll notice too that a skateboard that i pulled out it had only been on for 24 hours and they were already waxing that up with bur comb and here you can see the second one over i damaged that with my hive tool cautionary tail don't poke your hive tool in there but the cap cells are fantastic notice that some of the cells on the outer edge there are really large one of the members of our beekeeping association said oh it looked like they're building drone comb out there but they really aren't what happened is the foundation if we have the cells on the foundation lined up awkwardly near the edges of those rings they just fill them out to larger diameter cells and uh just has to do with the alignment how the bees built them up they didn't do any larvae there's no egg laying going on up in here and there again i did not use a queen excluder that comes up often people would put a queen excluder to make sure that the queen does not lay eggs up in the cells when the bees drow out its comb that would make it not usable but remember there's another box under this box that had honey already in it i call that a honey bridge and the queen is very unlikely to go up into the top box and start to lay eggs so you take a complete risk when you use kleenex when you go without a queen excluder but for me when you use the queen excluder it slows things way down and the honey production is just ridiculously good especially considered we had a recent dirt that i mentioned before and just take a sharp knife here and slice the extra pieces of the foundation off remember to get the foundation that is marked and identified for ross rounds or hog halves or whatever you're using now when people ask me do you like hog hats or ross rounds i like ross rounds it doesn't mean that you can earn more money from them it just means i like the way they look i like the way the bees use them and some people look at the catwalks there and say why is some of it really white and other parts of it kind of dark to where you can see into the honey that just has to do with how much cap wax the bees deposited on that the wider the thicker and if you can see honey color through it that's just thinner cab wax there so here it is packaged by the bees completely so this is really a marvel to look at and you have a choice you can have two clear covers for this or you can have one white opaque back for it i prefer to do both clear because anyone that you're going to give this to or if you're using it as a teaching tool for example i want people to be able to see both sides of it if anybody's going to spend money on something i want them to see the cap wax on both sides what the cells are like now one of the differences between the ross rounds and the hog halves is the ross rounds of course have the foundation in the middle and they build out on both sides the hog half is a half which means the foundation is on one side and they build out to one side with one cap cover these labels i got also from better b and i have to tell you not happy with the labels adhesion ability these things came off many times the tips start to raise out so they don't adhere very well and you might be looking at this going fred it's all wrinkly it looks like you're not doing a very good job of putting that label on there and i say to you if you make a few mistakes leave a few wrinkles on things it makes people more comfortable around you also there's no doubt this wasn't put on by some kind of machine this was done by human hands how much of that honey in there has been touched by human hands how much that comb none of it this is a perfect hands-off method for creating comb honey different from cut comb because remember if we didn't cut it out to make it the bees put it in these containers themselves that's the tiny miracle about it so this guy tom ross he's a sharp cookie came out after world war ii discovered plastics started experimenting with bees no great surprise that these white rings looked like they were cut from a plastic pipe and just a convenient kind of found object format there and they did some experimenting and ended up with ross rounds there are lots of commercial comb honey producers out there how much can you get for one of these do you think well right now they're going anywhere from 12 to dollars a piece and that's quite a lot really but they are a novelty and uh people can chew them it says eight ounces on that we're going to talk about that later too i'm going to tell you a little bit about labeling and what you have to say this honey is a sample of nature's purest most sweet food has not been altered in any way having been distilled from nectar and put in its container by the bees themselves what's cooler than that my wife already took one of these and gave it away can you believe that anyway we're also going to weigh it so stay with me on this we're going to see how much that stuff weighs and i'm also going to show you what to do with those that did not get completely capped i'm going to tell you too what the requirements are for labeling at least in my state you should look up your own department of agriculture food and drug find out what labels you have to put on it even if you're selling directly to the consumer which is all i would do so if you're interested in this please don't write me and ask to ship it that's a whole different set of regulations and i have to hand deliver this the other thing is they tell you to put it in the freezer that's what we're doing here load them right up that's the alarm that says the door was open too long put them in the freezer 24 or 48 hours just to make sure there's no little bugs or eggs that went in there with it that could later come to life and start creeping through it and messing things up now this is one of the ones that failed so i'm going to show you how to make chunk honey it's going to get in here and cut it right out of the ring this would not present well i'm sure as a ross round if you tried to pass this off i would caution you also if you're trying to get a reputation as a beekeeper and you're going to be selling your honey and honey products i would only sell your best stuff i wouldn't put anything out there that's halfway there and definitely don't use one of those opaque bottoms and cover up you know like a bunch of uncapped cells because your consumer is going to find that out later so i'm just going to bend it and put it in this jar now if you were selling this stuff you also wouldn't be handling it with your bare hands you want to practice food safety you'd be wearing food processor gloves and just pour that pure raw low high bunny in there how awesome does that look now this has really good curb appeal some people like to see whole honey in the jars like that i mean here's the thing why do people sell chunk honey comb honey hog hats ross rounds because there's no question that the bees made the cells and that the bees collected the honey and that the bees capped it nobody has found a way to fake that yet and i picked my 15 percent water honey so that just in case some of that uncapped stuff was a little high in water content it'll balance out with the honey up water over it so there you have a jar of chunk honey drawn comb ready to go in a jar with honey board around it now you've got all these from one super what you can do with them well what are the labeling requirements and does it really weigh eight ounces we're going to find that out look at that i just happen to have a triple beam balance scale first thing we have to do because we want it to be accurate we're going to have to weigh the components before the bees worked it up and put the wrong wax in it so we have a clear side and a ring another clear side and a ring and let's not forget the label then we zero out the balance scale so that the only thing we're going to weigh is what the bees put into it there you have it now it says eight ounces on it you're required to put what the actual weight is and what do we end up with well it's heavier than eight ounces and if we leave it on eight ounces that's incorrect incorrect in a good way though because guess what it actually weighs nine ounces and over an eighth so over nine and eight ounces so if it was labeled eight ounces you're not ripping anybody off so it's actually heavier than that should be on a pa honey or pollen label the common name raw honey honey whatever the ingredients honey and in this case honey and honeycomb manufacturing a processing address that's you and then the actual net weight also it tells you that you don't have to register with them if you're selling directly to a buyer so like a fruit stand at the end of your driveway you can sell it you still have to meet food safety requirements and they can't come after you if somebody buys it directly from you and then reports you because you lied and filled it with blueberry juice or something anyway thank you for watching i hope you benefited from this and i hope it answered all of those questions that you had about number one do i like ross rounds or hog halves i like ross rounds number two how does it work how do you do it how do you package it what is it thanks for watching i hope you have a fantastic weekend and i hope you enjoyed this presentation please click the like button down below if you liked what you saw here today and i invite you to subscribe to my channel for more in the future thanks a lot foreign

Channel: Frederick Dunn

Views: 134,208

Keywords: Ross round, chunk honey, comb honey, how to, beekeeping, honeycomb, making, packaging, labeling, rules, demonstration

Id: eG4V_esbvQE

Length: 29min 12sec (1752 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 11 2020