In this instructional video, Laurence Edwards demonstrates his experience with wooden section honey racks, showing finished sections, discussing common imperfections such as incomplete cappings and edge gaps, and explaining why achieving a perfect edge is challenging. He walks through his harvesting method—inspecting, pulling out good sections, shaking off bees, and immediately backfilling the slot to prevent brace or wild comb buildup. Edwards highlights the consequences of leaving gaps (wild comb, messy cleanup) and shows how he removes and repurposes the wild comb. He then presents the final packaged honey, emphasizing the superior appearance and taste of honey harvested directly from the hive with wax intact. While acknowledging his own amateur status and the difficulty of mastering wooden sections, he recommends the system for its sustainability and visual appeal, thanks Thorn Beekeeping for providing the rack, and invites viewers to share better techniques.
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Right, I know I said I'd stop doing this, but it's 8 PM, I'm at the River Apery, it's too late to be inspecting my bees, but I'm here to do a video showing you some of the finished off wooden sections. Now I have to say, I've found this series of videos very, very fun but also incredibly difficult, and I get this every single time that I try and get good results from wooden section racks. I find the bees do work them, but you need a real optimum flow And to get them right up to the edges is very, very difficult indeed. Luckily, the containers that they go in that I'll show you later on in this series covers up some of those gnarly edges and gives you a really nice looking finish. But I just wanted to do this video just to show you kind of roughly what you're expecting, roughly what I'm expecting. I've never really got anything better than this, and I'd say what I've got here is pretty much achievable for anyone. So enough of me talking, I'll pick out some of the good ones and I'll show you how my wooden section racks are finished in 2022. So I've got a little bit of a cross-section here, some that have finished off nicely, some that are nearly there, and some that I would say about as good as I ever really get. I've seen people get them better than this, but you know what, I just can't get them better than this. That there for the bees is perfectly capped, beautiful white cappings, really nice and heavy. But you look around those corners there and they're still not perfect. In fact, they're far from perfect. As I said though, I'll show you what these end up looking like when you get to the point of putting them into the packaging. And in terms of the ones that I'll be taking here today, I'll be taking that one. I'd say that one is about as good as you're going to get, good as I can get it anyway. And that one there also is about as good as you're going to get. This one here is pretty much finished, but for me, not acceptable. Big hole down the side. And then that one there, we've still got a little bit of time left on it, but for me, probably not acceptable again, just due to gaps in the side. Wooden section racks, wooden section honey, very, very difficult to get right. So in terms of harvesting, I find the wooden section racks are very, very easy to harvest, and the way that I find is best to do it is just go in as you're doing your inspections, pull out the ones that you think that are good, take them out, just shake the bees off and go and take them away, go back, get them packaged up. You don't need to do it like you would do a normal honey super. Like, you can go into a honey super and take a frame at a time, but you've got to go and backfill it. And the same here with wooden section racks. Every single time you take one out, you need to go back and put another one in. I definitely, definitely wouldn't wait until the end of the year thinking you're going to get the whole box done perfectly, because then you'll end up with the issues that I've had this year, which is really good spring flow. They've drawn everything out, they've pretty much finished it, and then you just get really bad weather and they go backwards on everything. And I do find with the section racks, both the Ross Rounds and the wooden section racks, When they start going backwards, very, very difficult to get them to move forward and finish things off properly. So my advice for you for the wooden section racks in terms of harvesting is just to go through, pick them out when they're ready, backfill the slot so they don't fill it with brace comb. I'll show you what they do if you just leave a gap, which is what I did. They just fill it with loads of brace comb, loads of wild comb, loads of wild honey, and then it gets a little bit messy to clean it all up. So as you can see here, that's what happens. You take it out, you get a big Big piece of wild comb in there. No worries about that, I'll just chisel that out. I'll take that home and I'll have that on my toast. It's not really anything that you can sell. As you're taking each of the individual ones out, as and when they're finished, just need to pop a new one in with new foundation and then leave the bees to it. So I've just picked this one up here, got a couple of bees on it. You can just shake them off, they're pretty easy to shake off, and the bees do come off. You give them a little bit of a tap And there we go, I've got my wooden section and all of the bees are completely off it. I'll take that home, I'll put it into the packaging, I'll do some lovely slow-mos, but as far as I'm concerned, the wooden section rack video is now complete. Do I recommend wooden section racks? Definitely yes. They are a challenge, and as a beekeeper, as a project manager, I love a good challenge. And I've still not mastered these, like nowhere near mastered them. I would consider myself a wooden section rack Amateur. I'd go that far even, because I've not got them perfect and I just can't get them to the point where they go all the way up to the edge. Now I'll continue to develop and hone my technique and try different things, but as always, I'm not going to scrap the series because I've not got the bees to work up to the edge. I've showed you how I do it, I've showed you the results that I can get, and then if anyone knows of a better way of doing it, stick it in the comments. I'd love to hear a better way to get results with wooden section racks. But going back to what I was saying, would I recommend it? Definitely, because it's a really nice sustainable wooden solution. If you get it right, the presentation is superb. People love these. Like, you literally cannot produce enough of these. This is what people want. It's the R word. I'm not going to say it on camera, but it is perfect. Straight from the hive honey with the wax included. It really doesn't come much better than this. I'm going to take this one home. I'll get the packaging on it. I'm looking forward to eating this one on my toast though. Really nice with a cheeseboard as well. It's another series that we finished. Final thanks to Thorn Beekeeping for providing this rack free of charge. Really, really grateful for that. I've had so much fun doing this series, and I hope you get slightly better success than I've had with the wooden section racks. So I'll take that home now. I'll package it all up, and I'll show you just how good that final presentation looks.
