What Drawn Comb Costs: The Honey Price of a Box of Comb and a Bound on Annual Comb Renewal

Drawn comb is the most valuable equipment in a hive and the least priced. This study prices it. The study is simulated, not measured: all figures are computed from stated assumptions, principally a honey-to-wax conversion of 7.0 kg of honey per kilogram of wax, the central value of the assumed range of 6.0 to 8.0 kg per kilogram, which is labelled throughout as an assumption rather than a measured constant. A fully drawn deep frame holds 0.12 kg of wax. A ten-frame box of foundationless frames therefore costs the colony 8.4 kg of honey to draw, a box built on wax foundation costs 2.8 kg because the sheet supplies most of the wax, and a box of already-drawn comb costs nothing. Against a stated season crop of 40 kg, the first-season yield penalties are 21.0 percent for foundationless comb, 7.0 percent for foundation, and zero for drawn comb. If comb replacement may consume at most 10 percent of the crop, the renewal bound for foundationless replacement is 4.76 frames per year in a thirty-frame colony, which is 0.1587 of the colony's comb per year and implies a full renewal cycle of 6.3 years; replacing on foundation relaxes the bound to 14.29 frames per year. On money prices stated in the paper, foundationless comb is the cheaper route only when honey is valued below 3.32 currency units per kilogram, or when foundation sheets cost more than 5.32 currency units each. The belief that foundationless beekeeping is free because no foundation is bought does not survive the arithmetic: the foundation is paid for either way, in cash or in honey, and at ordinary honey values the honey payment is the larger one.