Surprise your local beekeeper with this question (and what to consider if you keep bees)
If I wasn't a beekeeper and I was looking for honey, here's what I would ask a local beekeeper.
Speaking as a beekeeper, when non-beeks learn I’m a keeper, the most common questions they ask include:
How often do you get stung?
How many hives do you have?
Can I buy some honey? How much honey do you get?
How long have you kept bees?
How are your bees? I hear they’re dying out.
These are predictable questions, some with longer answers than others. If I was a non-beek consumer looking for local honey, a better question to ask:
How old is your comb?
Asking this question can help you decide if you’re going to buy honey from the beekeeper. If you’re a beekeeper, asking yourself this question can help you improve your colonies’ health by preventing many issues. Replacing the bees’ comb has several benefits for hive health.
Comb is made of beeswax, which is a substance secreted by wax glands along the honey bee’s abdomen only during a certain time in their early life. Beeswax requires a lot of resources. The common ratio that’s often cited is that it takes 6 to 8 pounds of honey to make 1 pound of wax. According to the British Bee Keepers Association, bees require approximately 30 million flowers to produce a single pound of wax. This means that comb’s quality can change over time depending on the resources the bees have and the colony’s health. If bees or nectar were exposed to a pesticide or other chemical, then when the bees create honey from the nectar, those contaminants could persist in the honey. And when bees create wax from that exposed honey, it could continue to persist in the comb.
Bees build a few different sizes of comb: worker brood, drone brood, honeycomb. They can fill all of the different sizes with honey if that’s the only comb that’s available to them. If there are traces of pesticides or other chemicals, that means that all the baby bees raised in the comb and any honey that comes in contact with it get exposed too.
Some threats to honeybees can contaminate comb. American foulbrood (AFB) is a spore-forming bacteria that’s generally fatal. Among beekeepers, the solution to AFB is burning the colonies and the ground around them. AFB spores are known to remain on surfaces, including soil, for more than 50 years, which is why destruction has always been the solution. (Over the past year, the USDA granted conditional approval for a pseudo-vaccine for AFB.)
When it comes to nosema, a spore-forming parasite that causes potentially fatal digestive issues in colonies, “spore-contaminated comb remains the greatest source of disease,” according to Texas A&M Agrilife Research. Honey bees can get exposed to nosema by cleaning contaminated comb, eating or carrying contaminated honey or pollen, or if robbing an infected colony. It’s common for beekeepers to share resources between colonies, so another potential cause of exposure could be unknowingly moving contaminated comb or honey to another hive.
While AFB will eventually kill a colony and their honey may be left behind, and nosema-contaminated honey can perpetuate and escalate the health issues in the colony, I couldn’t find any research that shows health problems for humans if humans consume contaminated honey. Personally, I wouldn’t want to eat honey exposed to spore-forming bacteria or parasites.
Aside from honey quality, honey production and honey bee biology both improve when colonies have fresh comb. A 2021 study in the Journal of King Saud University found that colonies with fresh comb stored significantly more honey and pollen than colonies that had old comb. The same study also found that that worker bees, drones, and queen bees that developed in fresh comb “were significantly heavier” than bees that grew in old comb—both at the beginning of the experiment and at the end.
How can beekeepers make sure comb doesn’t get too old without having to replace all their equipment at once? Certified Naturally Grown (CNG) is an accreditation known as “the grassroots alternative to certified organic.” CNG’s apiary standards require annual removal of at least 20 percent of each colony’s comb. This means that each colony never has comb that’s more than 5 years old. CNG says, “Over time, pesticide residues accumulate, and have harmful effects on developing bee brood that is also reared in the wax cells. Also, each pupa that develops in a cell leaves behind a very thin pupal skin (its cocoon) and as these continue to build, the cells get smaller and may harbor more disease-causing organisms or spores that can be harmful to brood.”
Beekeepers have several options when managing their hive equipment. They can provide empty frames for the bees to build fresh comb, they can buy wax foundation pre-stamped with the comb pattern to help the bees get started, or they can re-use plastic foundation with the comb stamp. Wax foundation is created commercially from the honey cappings of many different hives, which introduces the risk for exposure if a colony had struggled with spore-like or fungal, chemical, or bacteria-related. According to CNG, “The commercially available beeswax used in foundation, whether plain wax sheets or wax-coated plastic, typically contains pesticide residues from the original source – both pesticides that have been used in bee hives and those used on crops that the source honey bees foraged on.”
When I first started beekeeping, I joined CNG as soon as I was eligible and I remained a member for a few years. When we had death and illnesses in our family, it became too challenging to maintain the inspection administration while managing family care. All of my practices still meet CNG standards, but I still don’t have the time to re-join. When I introduce new frames to colonies every year, I write the year on the top of the frame. Each winter the colonies get smaller and my supply room starts to fill with hive boxes and frames. I organize the frames by year. I take the oldest comb, set it aside, and use it in swarm traps (also known as bait hives) the following spring. At the same time I cut the comb out of all the frames from the previous year’s swarm traps, then give those frames back in the spring so that the bees can build fresh, new comb.
If you’re not a beekeeper, surprise a local beekeeper the next time you’re chatting with them and ask them about their comb. Comment below with their answer. I’m curious to hear what they say!