Herman Danenhower

By: Nancy Simpson

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Nancy
I am here with Herman Danenhower. I’m so glad to be sitting with you. You were recommended by Dr. David Peck as the man to talk to because of your expertise in honeycomb.

Herman
Well, it was nice of him. I’m glad to speak with you.

Nancy
My interest is in wax. I started beekeeping about 13 years ago and realized that after I killed my hives the first year, I had a bunch of wax. So, I melted that wax down and entered the South Carolina state fair in the one-pound beeswax block category. Ever since, I have gone down the rabbit hole of beeswax. My favorite honey is not extracted honey. It’s honeycomb.

That’s what I’d like to pick your brain about. Let’s start with you. How did you get your start? How did you get into beekeeping?

Herman
Well, I went to a trade school when I was 18.
I was learning the machinist trade. The math instructor at that school was a beekeeper and we became good friends. When I was helping him with the bees, I kind of knew the very first day that I have to do this. This was very exciting. I’ve been doing it for over 50 years now.
But that’s how I got started in 1971 or so.

Nancy
Amazing. Those were the pre-Varroa mite, pre-small hive beetle days.

Herman
Yeah, beekeeping was a lot easier in those days. I lived through it all. Tracheal mites, Varroa mites, now the hive beetles and possibly hornets to come.

Nancy
Is it true that you could just set out a few boxes and catch a swarm and just go from there? I mean, were bees really that easy to manage and take care of?

Herman
Back in those days, there were so many feral colonies, wild bees living in hollow trees, that you could catch swarms easily. And you would get phone calls. Once the community knew you were a beekeeper, you would get calls all the time. You still get swarms today, but it’s mostly from managed colonies. The feral population is pretty much non-existent. The Varroa just constantly kills them.

Nancy
Interesting, because I’m from South Carolina, and we still do have feral colonies down here, but they aren’t in bee trees necessarily. They are more in cutouts, within homes. Do you still get all that up in Pennsylvania?

Herman
We get calls for cutouts. I avoid them if I can. A lot of work could be involved. I’m not a carpenter, but there is a need for cutouts and removing them from buildings.

Nancy
I would like to ask you more about wax, specifically honeycomb. What attracted you to honeycomb?

Herman
Well, I was so enthusiastic about beekeeping that I would read a magazine called Gleanings in Bee Culture. Now, that magazine still exists. It is just called Bee Culture now, but way back when I was getting it, it was called Gleanings in Bee Culture. A man by the name of Richard Taylor would write a bee talk column every month. It was mostly about producing comb honey.

He was a great writer. I thoroughly enjoyed his articles, and he inspired me to make comb honey. I started 40 years ago. I made Ross Rounds for many years; it’s a nice comb honey system. I prefer the Hogg Halfcomb now. I’ve bought the system, and I just put my efforts in the halfcomb system, now.

Nancy
Did I get this right? Did you have some dealings with that halfcomb system?

Herman
Not really. John Hogg was the inventor. He had a lot of problems getting it off the ground, but he put a lot of thought into the system. I think the man is pretty much a genius, and when I had opportunity to buy the system at his passing, I did so. The only thing I added to the system is the smaller unit of eight cassettes in a frame, so a beekeeper can put this frame in the middle of a super, any kind of super, and just make eight honeycombs.

Nancy
Is that a recent variation?

Herman
I experimented with it for about three Summers, and I just brought it out.

Nancy
So it’s hot on the market now, but it’s been in process for about four years?

Herman
I wouldn’t put the money and effort in this until I proved it to myself, so I did it with prototype frames. Now the frames are injection molded, so they’re all the same. Everything’s uniform, and I’m confident that it’s a good product.

Nancy
So you have quality control on the product, and you’re using it yourself?

Herman
Yes, absolutely.

Nancy
I just want to go back for a moment to Richard Taylor. I know the name but tell me more about him. Where was he from?

Herman
New York State. I think he lived near Rochester, Finger Lakes. I remember he had a roadside stand selling honey and honeycomb in the Finger Lakes region.

Nancy
He was not an academic through the Cornell lab or anything like that?

Herman
No, he was an academic, but his passion was beekeeping.

Nancy
Did he work with Dyce Lab and the Cornell group there?

Herman
I don’t think he did. He taught philosophy or something, he may have been a visiting professor at Cornell, but I think he was mostly at the University of Rochester. Well, his passion was beekeeping. Good writer, inspiring.

Nancy
Do you know about what decade he died?

Herman
I’m just going to throw it out there, 20 years ago, but I don’t know. I do know one of my favorite books that he wrote is called The Joys of Beekeeping. It’s a must read, in my opinion, because he just expresses himself about how you feel when you’re keeping bees. You’re not really going to learn anything from this book. It’s just about the joy of doing it. It’s a must read for people that have a passion for beekeeping.

Nancy
Yes, I agree, and I think that there is science and there is art, and it’s beyond art. With beekeeping, there’s something more. If you’re truly passionate, there’s something, dare I say, spiritual.

Your management with honeycomb, let’s talk a bit about that. How would people do it? I mean, it’s a dying art, it seems, the comb production.

Herman
Honeycomb is a real challenge, especially if you haven’t kept bees for many years. The bees are not attracted to foundation of any kind. They don’t necessarily want to go in the round sections. They do not want to go in the whole cassettes, so you have to trick them to do so.

I use a swarm prevention method. I have posted on YouTube. It’s just called the Danenhower split, and I make a lot of comb honey that way.

Nancy
I’ll certainly look it up, but can you walk us step by step through The Danenhower split?

Herman
Well, basically, when dandelions bloom, I’ll put a queen excluder between the two hive bodies, and I’m going to isolate the queen in top or bottom. When I put the excluder in, I don’t know where I have trapped her. Ten days later, all I have to look for is eggs. Whatever part I trapped her in is going to have eggs. I’ll set that aside. Let’s call that the set-aside. Wherever you set that in the apiary, the queen goes with it.

Nancy
I need to jump in here. By physically setting aside, you mean you split it at that point.

Herman
I’m splitting the hive. One hive becomes two.
The part where she had been kept out of for 10 days is the parent stand. It’s going to stay where it was, but basically, I swarmed it. The set-aside is going to lose all foragers. They go back to where they’re accustomed. I introduce a queen when I do the split. The mother queen goes to the set-aside.

The parent colony gets a queen that I will introduce. It behaves like a swarm. It has to re-establish a brood nest because they have had no eggs for 10 days.
Generally, they do not swarm again. They will make comb honey under those conditions.

Nancy
Do you need high populations?

Herman
The more, the better but there’s some kind of fine line there. If you really crowd your bees, they’re going to swarm. You don’t get comb honey when they swarm either. Where I live, the May honey flows are very good. I wait until the dandelions come in. The split does very well in making me a nice super colony.

Nancy
When is dandelion season for you? Where I live, it’s from early April to about the first of May.

Herman
Dandelions up here come on board at the end of April, into May. That’s about when I split where I live, on the first of May. Then the good honey flows come in after that.

Nancy
You understand why I’m probing for timing? It’s because I intend to do this in South Carolina.

Herman
Your timing is going to be different. You’re going to have to do it earlier.

Do this in April, maybe. April 1st instead of May 1st. When the dandelions bloom and that’s early April.

Nancy
I’m a honey judge so I am coming at my passion for wax through that lens. Have you considered honey shows?

Herman
I put the Hogg Halfcomb in any show I have opportunity to do so. Just to show the product off itself. It’s nice to get a blue ribbon but that’s not why I put it there. I want people to see it. As far as taking the time to make the perfect package of something for a show, I don’t really want to take the time to do that. I usually do get a blue ribbon because I’m the only Hogg Halfcomb on the show.

Nancy
It depends on the system of honey judging. Down South, we’re trained in what was known as the Welsh honey judge system, which means you judge to a certain standard. Even if you were the only one entering, you wouldn’t necessarily get a first.

Herman
I understand all those things.

Nancy
You also understand the fussiness of it. It’s a marketing presentation.

Herman
No fingerprints. All things that I totally understand, I don’t really want to take the time to do that. I just want to see it. Look how nice this is. That’s all. It’s a great marketing tool.

Nancy
Back to that split. The Danenhower split. What if you mis-time it? Is it all lost if you do it later?

Herman
It could be all lost. To be perfectly honest with you, I split about 50 colonies to do this. Three out of four, I’m successful. But there are failures.

This is not an exact science. If the colony is too strong when I first put the excluder in, it may swarm before I get the split done. I’ve gotten better at this, of course, over time. Things can go wrong.

Nancy
I imagine you can read your bees with experience. You know the timing.

Herman
You can read the colony. That takes years of experience, unfortunately. I’d like to encourage all beekeepers to make comb honey. You wouldn’t have to buy an extractor and all this and that.

Nancy
The other method would be an alternative hive, not a Langstroth. Have you done anything with top bar hives, for example?

Herman
I have not. I’ve been doing this for 50 years. It’s very hard to make changes because I’ve been successful. I’m not going to do anything different.

Nancy
I’m thinking about new beekeepers because the whole purpose of a top bar hive is totally natural. No foundation whatsoever. Natural comb. You don’t really extract. If you do, it’s crush and strain. You know how that works.

Herman
There’s nothing against a top bar hive. If you’re trying to make a living keeping bees, I don’t think you want top bar hives.

Nancy
Good point.

Herman
A nice thing to have for someone in the backyard.

Nancy
Me, for example, I like to play around in the backyard with different hive configurations to experiment.

Herman
Very cool.

Nancy
I was wondering about mentoring. You’ve been doing this for so long, 50 years or more. Do you have mentees? Do you have people that you’re teaching the system to, beyond selling it?

Herman
Well, not anyone in particular, but I have all kinds of handouts when I’m at a show. I share some of the methods I use to produce the comb honey. The simplest method is if you catch a swarm, put it in one hive body, put your Hogg super on the top, the complete super. Most of the time I get 40 nice comb sections.

Nancy
Just with a new swarm?

Herman
A new swarm.

Nancy
Because they are geared to making wax?

Herman
They’re industrious. They probably will not swarm again. That works really well where I live.

Nancy
Have you done anything with cut comb, with the surplus foundation?

Herman
I’ve done all these things over the years. All very nice comb systems but I got tired of putting the foundation in every year. I don’t like draining it overnight and I don’t like picking it up. All very nice comb systems. I’ve done all of them. I just have my preference. That’s all.

Nancy
Sounds like you’ve landed on a system that works for you.

Herman
Works for me. You make some money from it. Nobody keeps bees because it’s lucrative. You keep bees because you love it. But I do make some money, yes.

Nancy
As a small-time beekeeper, I would be most interested in your shallow eight cassette frame, we spoke of the shallow system, not the full system.

Herman
The new frame idea is the easiest way of all to make a couple honeycombs. Because beginning beekeepers are going to have their hive bodies and they’re going to have a super of some sort to make honey. You could put a frame in the middle where they would make comb and then your outside frames would be extracting frames. And nothing big or special, well it is special because it’s comb honey, but only eight cassettes for family and friends.

Nancy
That’s beautiful. Have you seen the systems where you place four jars on the frames surrounded by a super with just a strip of cut comb in each of the jars? Supposedly they make comb within the jar. I’ve seen this in pictures.

Herman
I’ve seen it. That I’ve never tried, but I’ve seen it.

Nancy
It sounds like it would be too good to be true.

Herman
It could be doable, but it wouldn’t be worth my trouble. You’re going to have to force bees to go in that jar to build comb.

Nancy
Exactly. So, the question is how might one do that? How do you force them in?

Herman
Maybe my split or some kind of swarm prevention method. They make it, so they don’t want to swarm again. Or you get lucky. You can get lucky in beekeeping.

Nancy
You must be talking to me, dumb luck. I’m teasing, but yeah, I feel that. As for the future of beekeeping as an industry, where do you see our industry going specifically for comb?

Herman
I don’t exactly know how to answer that. Comb honey did take off with this charcuterie board.

Nancy
Yes, the charcuterie board.

Herman
That was a boost to selling comb because a piece of comb honey goes on these boards.

Nancy
I heard from an old timer that during the depression people would not buy extracted honey because they weren’t sure it was real. There was danger of liquid honey being cut with molasses or sugar water. Comb honey was the real deal.

Herman
I think there’s been a lost awareness of comb honey over the past hundred years. But not a lot of beekeepers make it, so I have no trouble selling it. I make three or four thousand pieces, and I sell out every year.

Nancy
Do you ever consider doing full frame and selling it to restaurants for charcuterie boards or whatever?

Herman
All those are nice things; I have limited time. With the market I have, I’m just going to stay with my whole cassette system.

Nancy
That makes perfect sense.

Herman
Your whole interest in wax interests me because it’s kind of a miracle where this wax even comes from. I know honeybees have glands under their abdomen, but they can’t activate them, or they don’t activate if there isn’t a nectar flow or being fed some sugar syrup. Without a nectar flow, they do not generate wax, and they do not build comb. But how nectar becomes this thing is a science I don’t know really anything about. Yeah, beeswax is a remarkable problem.

Nancy
I did an interview with Tom Seeley, who goes into more of those details. It has to do with the swarm instinct. It’s all timing that stimulates the release of those eight wax glands. It’s dependent on exactly what you’re saying. It comes down to resources, a nectar flow.

Herman
They don’t build much wax in September on a good goldenrod flow. Spring is better. They will build wax any time of year if enough nectar is coming in, but the key is timing. If it’s swarm season and they’re swarming, they are predisposed to build comb with those swarmers.

Nancy
Well, this has been delightful and I’m wondering, is there anything we have left off?

Herman
It seems like we covered a lot.

Nancy
We have and I appreciate your time. You are down to earth and just good natured.

Herman
You’re very welcome. I enjoyed it myself. That wasn’t so bad at all.

Nancy
Nope, not bad at all. In fact, very enlightening. Thanks!