As my family and I prepare to do our annual honey harvest, the care we take to preserve both bees and beeswax comb stand out in contrast to what used to be. The long-standing use of basket skep hives, for example, meant each year, the colony established in one faced a crush and strain process for wax recovery. And it could be worse than that.

Joseph Warder, in his 1716 treatise on bees, shared a method for harvesting honey and wax. He acknowledge it was destructive, so he suggested only using the method with the weaker hives.

When you have poiz’d them all, and marked which of them you resolve to take, then proceed after this Manner. Have in Readiness some split Sticks about 6 Inches long, and some Rags dipt in Brimstone*, and put in each of these split Sticks, then dig as many Holes in the Ground near your Bees, as you design to take Hives, then in the Evening stick in each Hole one of your Matches, and lighting one at a time, fetch the Hive and set over it, immediately with some of the Earth top the Hive all round to keep in the Smoak, and keep in the Bees, they will be all dead in half a quarter of an Hour; so giving the Hive two or three Knocks with your Hand to shake down the Bees that hang about the Combs. Take it into your House for your use.¹⁾Joseph Warder, The true Amazons : or, The monarchy of bees : being a new discovery and improvement of those wonderful creatures … : also how to make the English wine or mead, equal, if not superior to the best of other wines, London: J. Pemberton and W. Taylor, 1716, p. 76.
*brimstone is sulfur

In the context of a farm family, deciding to make mead, and needing to take honey from the bees to do it, Warder wrote the above.
²⁾Joseph Warder, The true Amazons : or, The monarchy of bees : being a new discovery and improvement of those wonderful creatures … : also how to make the English wine or mead, equal, if not superior to the best of other wines, London: J. Pemberton and W. Taylor, 1716, p. 24.

It was the destructiveness of this and other methods of harvest that led innovators, including Reverend Langstroth, to promote movable combs and honey supers. The use of basket skeps and other one-use technologies, went deservedly into decline.