# What is the secret to Ross Rounds?



## Harley Craig (Sep 18, 2012)

from what I've read, it sounds like that is even harder to get them to draw out and fill.


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## Rube63 (Jun 28, 2010)

When I want bees to draw comb in a box they try to shy away from I put a queen excluder on both sides of the box with the queen in there with them. She will put eggs in part of it but it will be drawn and they will fill it later.


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## weldingfreak6010 (Sep 11, 2012)

Somebody correct me if I am wrong, But to get bees to fill a Ross rounds they need to have a reason too. like more field bees then they know what to do with. and keep them that way with out swarming. that is the trick so to speak. Some say to really crowd a hive and give them all capped brood and take away the queen so no baby bees to feed saves, I have heard 100 lbs of honey to feed a batch of brood for the month. Your goal should be to try to direct a way to get them focused on the rounds. Here is what Mr bush has to say http://bushfarms.com/beessplits.htm#cutdown


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## Rader Sidetrack (Nov 30, 2011)

> I have requests for honey with comb in it

If the Ross Rounds aren't working for you, why not just put in a frame with *thin* foundation or no foundation and then cut the resulting comb honey into chunks that fit into the jars?


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## Scott J. (Feb 6, 2007)

Ross round supers need to have a strong necter flow and lots and lots of bees. Some hives do better than others for reasons I do not understand. I only have four ross supers, and If I force all the bees down to one brood box and a few days later see that they are not up in the ross super I will take it off and put regular supers on. Then I will try setting up another hive with the ross super and see how they take to it. I am sure there is a better way, I just don't know it.


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## tommysnare (Jan 30, 2013)

:thumbsup:

i bought a ross round setup 2 years ago....tried it 2 years in a row and this year its sitting in the shop. didnt even bother getting it out. im gonna unload it on ebay most likely.

also,if u want to cut comb honey out and put it in jars with wet honey (known as chunk honey jars) why would you do that with ross rounds ? the beauty of ross rounds if u can get them to work is that u just remove the rounds when they are capped and put the lids on them and sell them at a premium. kind of defeats the purpose. we are completely foundationless other that when we have bought nucs and its allllll cutable comb honey. and beautiful !!!!


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## dadandsonsbees (Jan 25, 2012)

Rader Sidetrack said:


> > I have requests for honey with comb in it
> 
> If the Ross Rounds aren't working for you, why not just put in a frame with *thin* foundation or no foundation and then cut the resulting comb honey into chunks that fit into the jars?


That's the way I get my comb. FOUNDATIONLESS.


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## snl (Nov 20, 2009)

The secret is to buy the company, tell everyone how much money they can make selling Ross Rounds a then sit back and let the money roll in! 

Tried em once when someone else tried them, failed and gave me the Super. I gave it away to someone else to try.... Ross Rounds are like fish tanks, they are just passed around....


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## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

Running colonies for comb honey is not the same as running them for honey production. Find some comb honey production manuals or pamphlets.

One thing you need to do is run bees at the edge of swarming. You will have to shake your strongest hives down into one box and install the comb honey supers above an excluder. You will also have to check for queen cells periodically and destroy them.


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## RayMarler (Jun 18, 2008)

Grab this bood as a PDF or EBook...

http://books.google.com/books?id=_b...a=X&ei=oiDKUeTqBKaJiALFmYCgDA&ved=0CC8Q6AEwAA

It's written like a journal of a year's management for comb honey. It was written by G. M. Doolittle, one of the fathers of beekeeping in it's current form.


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## cade10 (Aug 24, 2012)

They gotta be strong, have a flow going on and I would say they have to be motivated. I do a few every year - I just take a strong hive and put them on with a queen excluder underneath, that is really the only time I use an excluder, I don't want larva in the rounds. I just put on a box and leave them and check now and then. I have a hard time getting them to really go to town and get them all finished up. If they start going on it and things work good I get a box or so. It really cuts into the honey production so I don't get too excited about them, they don't sell well in my area.
Most of the time I use the hive at my house to do them - all but one of my hives are away from the house and when I extract those I take all the supers back to the house and do them, then set the empties back outside the house for the house hive to clean them out. Keeps them busy in the fall and I don't have to go back out to my out yards with wet supers.

It just seems like it takes them all summer to get it done no matter how strong the hive is but at least when they are done they aren't hard to process, just pop out, drain and put into boxes.


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## Beeslave (Feb 6, 2009)

Richard Taylor's shook swarm method works great


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## Michael Palmer (Dec 29, 2006)

Read the book, or watch the CD...Honey in the Comb by Killion.


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## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

Gene Killion?

Ray Churchill, from Watertown,NY, wrote an article on comb honey production for Bee Culture back when it was still Gleanings in Bee Culture. I don't know the title or when it was published. It was some time in the 1990s I think.

For those who want to go to the trouble, contact Lloyd Spear, owner of Ross Rounds, and ask his advice. He buys and sells thousands of combs a year, so he probably has some advice to give.


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## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

snl said:


> Ross Rounds are like fish tanks, they are just passed around....


Funny you should mention fish tanks in a Ross Round Thread. I think he sold them too at one time. lol


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## Cloverdale (Mar 26, 2012)




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## Sharpbees (Jun 26, 2012)

In order to get them into ross rounds you need to push 2 deep boxes of bees and all brood that will fit into one box then put on the ross rounds during a strong honey flow. You must be vigilante in swarm control because crowding this tight will make them want to build q-cells and swarm. In my area I don't get long enough flows to produce much this way. Also the rounds in the jar usually doesn't stay positioned in the jar well, it tends to float up sideways once the jar is filled with honey. You'd be better off using shallow supers with thin non wired foundation or foundationless frames and doing cut comb. IMHO

Like M, Palmer stated earlier check out the book or cd "Honey in the comb" for an in depth description of Killion's management technique for producing comb honey.


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## Michael Palmer (Dec 29, 2006)

The Killions have the record for number of sections produced by one colony. Around 300 if I remember.


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## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

Ray Churchill holds the NY record I bet.


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## RayMarler (Jun 18, 2008)

Beeslave said:


> Richard Taylor's shook swarm method works great


Yes, that was Doolittle's method in that book I posted a link to earlier in this thread.


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## casinoken (May 6, 2012)

Ok guys and gals, have read ur replies, but some don't make sense to me. The hive that i just removed the untouched ross round from is a boomer. Started at the beginning of the year with one deep and one medium. Soon had toa addanother medium which they qickly drew out. Then added the ross and another medium above it. The following week had to add another deep and another medium, and yes i had to get a stepladder. So, have since removed two full mediums for extraction, waited two weeks before giving up on the ross and removing it, untouched, and had to add another medium. What confyses me is that a ross is just a different shaped shallow, correct? By that i mean that it is a box with wax foundation for the bees to draw. So why won't they. My hive this spring has drawn from new plastic foundation, one 10 frame deep completely and three 10 frame mediums completely, and the deep is now full of brood and the three mediums are 3/4 full of honey. Yet they bypass the natural wax in the ross. Doesn't make good logical sense to me.


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## Ben Franklin (May 3, 2011)

I was lucky to find two Ross Rounds suppers, Free. Last year I put them on with new foundation.
They filled them and capped them, but before I could harvest I got robbed Big Time.
This week my bass wood tree is blooming and I have put them back on.


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## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

casinoken said:


> Ok guys and gals, have read ur replies, but some don't make sense to me. The hive that i just removed the untouched ross round from is a boomer. Started at the beginning of the year with one deep and one medium. Soon had toa addanother medium which they qickly drew out. Then added the ross and another medium above it. The following week had to add another deep and another medium, and yes i had to get a stepladder. So, have since removed two full mediums for extraction, waited two weeks before giving up on the ross and removing it, untouched, and had to add another medium. What confyses me is that a ross is just a different shaped shallow, correct? By that i mean that it is a box with wax foundation for the bees to draw. So why won't they. My hive this spring has drawn from new plastic foundation, one 10 frame deep completely and three 10 frame mediums completely, and the deep is now full of brood and the three mediums are 3/4 full of honey. Yet they bypass the natural wax in the ross. Doesn't make good logical sense to me.


Doesn't make sense, you are right. Can't say what you should have done differently.


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## loggermike (Jul 23, 2000)

Well, its not just a shallow super. there is a LOT of plastic material taking up space the bees dont like. So they pretty much have to be forced into using this space. And they will if they feel crowded and a flow is on. I have never been able to get round combs made without first shaking all the bees down to a single deep, and giving all the rest of the supers(and brood box) to other hives.Of course this is an invitation to swarm , so its best if this hive has a young queen from the current year.
I usually put on 2 RR supers . 

And leave off the excluder.


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## casinoken (May 6, 2012)

I don't use excluders on any of my hives, and another thing that has driven me nuts over the ross is, everytime i opened the hive, there were as many bees in it as the mediums, they just weren't drawing anything.


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## Michael Palmer (Dec 29, 2006)

sqkcrk said:


> Ray Churchill holds the NY record I bet.


He used to win the EAS Comb Honey award year after year. The St Lawrence valley is noted for its white comb honey. Or was. Anyone make comb honey over there anymore, Mark?


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## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

Buster does. Miniframe combs in medium depth supers.


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## smoke (Jan 17, 2006)

I always add at least two supers at a time. Also include four half filled bait sections in lowest super added. It takes a good flow and strong hive. As they are filled I remove sort and add more. As was said, some hives take to them better than others. I never use an excluded with rounds.


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## flyingbrass (Jul 2, 2011)

I about give up on them also


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## loggermike (Jul 23, 2000)

Right. The queens do not find the RR supers attractive to lay in so excluders aren't needed. The bees also do not like them , that's why they have to be crowded into them , with no other more attractive options. You can't mix comb honey supers with regular ones. You need to do one or the other.
I first started with RR's when Richard Taylor was writing so much about them in Gleanings. But I soon found that I could not even get them worked over a deep and shallow like he did. It just didn't work here. 
And like most other things with bees , timing is everything.


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## Adrian Quiney WI (Sep 14, 2007)

I made up some RR boxes 9 inches wide and have them on my heaviest populated nucs in which I am awaiting signs of new queens. I'll see what they do with them and post here. Given that I see my nucs draw out regular combs quickly I remain optimistic.


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## Joseph Clemens (Feb 12, 2005)

Sounds to me like you were giving them alternative places to build comb and store honey. You really need to "force" them to work in the Ross supers -- as in, give them nowhere else to work. Sometimes it still doesn't work, but that's how it has worked, for me. But, even doing that, isn't a guarantee.


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