Maintaining hives is a lot of effort: making and repairing frames is a time-consuming activity and something which takes a lot of hours out of the year. Building and repairing honeycomb is even more effort for the bees with seven times the energy required to make wax than honey!
So it's sensible that when we extract honey we rarely slice up any honeycomb despite several of our family and friends asking if they can nab some. We prefer instead to return emptied honeycomb to the bees to reuse and recover any honey that hasn't been removed from the extraction process.
Occasionally little mistakes - such as leaving a 3/4 height frame in a full-height box - means that the bees make honeycomb without foundation board and we have to cut it away anyway. Friday's extraction found a frame in just that situation. To the beekeepers goes the spoils!
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