It was actually harder to manage them from the perspective of modern beekeeper. Manipulating bars-combs was sometimes really hard since bees built comb their way because you left them on their own with either just a strip of wax or wooden stick as a guide for them instead of the whole frame with foundation.

Once you sorted that out though the combs were perfect and easy to manage. Sometimes you get lucky and they "listen" you from the beginning though.

Honeycomb is something else. You have to make sure that you kind of separate brood and honey and that again takes management. I just left them to their own and just took a comb or two of honey at the end each year. The last few combs were always 100% honey. I also let them swarm multiple times per year (had smaller Kenyan hive - 15 bars ) so I had practically no issues with Varroa in these.

I populated them with my own swarms or packages. Or are you asking about rearing queens?