Comb honey production requires the bees to build fresh comb and fill it with honey in a format that can go directly to the consumer. This is harder than it sounds.
Section comb (the traditional method) uses small wooden or plastic frames — Ross Rounds, Hogg Half-Comb cassettes, or basswood section boxes — placed inside the hive. The bees draw fresh wax comb within these sections, fill it with honey, and cap it. The beekeeper removes the full sections and packages them directly. No extraction, no processing.
Cut comb is an alternative: the beekeeper lets bees draw and fill standard frames, then cuts the capped comb into pieces (squares or rectangles) and packages them in containers, often surrounded by extracted honey (comb-in-jar or chunk honey).
The production challenge: Bees only build comb when they have strong nectar flow and enough population to allocate workers to wax production. Wax production consumes significant energy — bees eat 6-8 pounds of honey to produce 1 pound of wax. This means comb honey requires strong colonies, good weather, and abundant forage — all at the same time. A bad nectar season means no comb honey. A weak colony won't draw comb in sections. The yield per hive is substantially lower than extracted honey.