We are not new to beekeeping, but we took about 20 years off when we lost so many bees to the then-new parasites and diseases. But we’re now back and are working to repopulate our area with healthy productive bees.
Instead of doing the usual thing with just seeing how much honey we could produce, I decided to to go back to my youth, when I discovered how awesome pure comb honey is. So we are concentrating on keeping the bees healthy and productive, but letting them do their own thing in making their own comb and filling it with the local nectars.
Usually beekeepers, even comb honey producers start out the bees with wax foundation that they purchase from suppliers who buy wax from beekeepers around the country and stamp out the bottoms of bee cells onto a sheet for the bees to start with. The bees then build out the sides of the cells and fill the cells with honey. The downside is that the center of the comb has a thick piece of wax from unknown locations with unknown possible contaminations.
We let the bees do the entire job of building comb. We put a thin piece of our beeswax from our own previous comb scraps on the frame to let the bees know where to start and they then build and fill the whole comb. When we harvest the comb, we avoid even allowing our own starter wax to be included in the comb we supply for our customers.
The result is a delicate piece of comb with virgin wax that is as natural as it gets.