Honey frame

A "Honey For Me" frame. The white cells around the top are those the bees have finished work on filling and have closed off with a wax seal. The other cells are "work in progress" and will hopefully soon fall victim to the big brown bear who will come to steal it.

When harvested, the first job ist to remove the wax capping seal to allow the honey to be spun out. This is done either with a hot knife or more usually a fork like tool with lots of small prongs. The wax can then be used for various purposes.

One tries as far as possible not to damage the wax cells themselves as after spinning out the honey they are normally fully in tact and are returned to the hives where the bees clean and repair them before refilling,  Saves them a lot of work - they need to consume about 8kg of nectar to produce 1 kg of wax and all of that reduces the amount of honey for me!