Bright Caps and Wet Caps — ABJ on Comb Honey Looks

This month’s American Bee Journal has a comb honey piece that asks a question I’ve wondered about myself: why do some capped combs come out bright and white, almost like new snow, while others look dark, damp, and tired, even when the honey inside is just as good?

Beekeepers call them “dry” and “wet” cappings. The article makes a good point right away. Neither kind is actually wet or sticky to the touch; the “wet” ones just look that way. The writer tells about a first batch of section-box comb honey that came out perfect and nearly white, and then opening a super from a second hive where every single comb had that wet look, even though nothing had gone wrong with it.

The other thing they found is that buyers care a lot. People will dig through a whole display looking for the one bright comb. Most of us who extract never think about it, since the cappings all get sliced off into the bucket anyway. The full article goes on into what’s behind the difference, and it’s worth reading if you sell comb.

Here in Pearland I’ve seen both kinds come off the same yard in the same week, so I’ve always figured it has as much to do with the bees in a hive as anything I did. If you plan to sell comb honey or cut comb next spring, keep an eye on which colonies make the brightest caps and give those the comb supers. And this time of year, with the supers off and the bees settling in for our mild winter, it’s a fine time to melt down those cappings you saved. The wax is worth keeping no matter what it looked like on the frame.

Read it from the source: Wet Cappings and Dry: What’s the Difference? (American Bee Journal, November 2026).

Back in the yard: month-by-month work and the rest of the journal.