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Author Topic: When to harvest honey?  (Read 8349 times)

Offline rayb

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When to harvest honey?
« on: May 25, 2006, 11:16:22 am »
Question #1.    If a honey super is full, and completely capped, is appropriate to harvest the honey now or is there a reason to wait and do  all the supers at once later?

Question #2.    If the hive is really busy and full of bees when we take the supers off, will it be overcrowded with the removal of the supers? Where do they all go? Do I put another empty super back on ? Or is there a natural reduction of bee population and overcrowding is not a problem?


Thanks, Ray

Offline Finsky

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Re: When to harvest honey?
« Reply #1 on: May 25, 2006, 01:07:17 pm »
Quote from: rayb
Question #1.    If a honey super is full, and completely capped, is appropriate to harvest the honey now or is there a reason to wait and do  all the supers at once later?


Yes, it sounds good  :P
If one super is capped it is better stay in hives warm. In cool place it may crystallisize.

It is difficult to exctract one or two super, because you loose a lot honey to get system dirty.

Quote
Question #2.    If the hive is really busy and full of bees when we take the supers off, will it be overcrowded with the removal of the supers? Where do they all go? Do I put another empty super back on ? Or is there a natural reduction of bee population and overcrowding is not a problem?


When you take honey off and honey flow continues it is necassary to give at once new room for nectar.  If you have one capped box you need 2 box more where they dry up nectar.

If you do not give room enough hive will swarm.

It is good to  give box of foundantions. They draw up it quickly.

And if hive is full of bees, give to it at least 2 new boxes.  

Put those new boxes between brood and honey. Look brood if they are making  queen cells.  

If you have in brood box capped honey frames, lift them to uppermost box. If there is some brood, let them emerge.
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Offline rayb

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« Reply #2 on: May 25, 2006, 01:58:07 pm »
Finsky, Kiitos .Thanks for the quick response. It seems like every day I visit the hives I come up with new questions that the book does not always answer. I appreciate everyones help.

Ray

Offline Apis629

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When to harvest honey?
« Reply #3 on: May 25, 2006, 03:05:37 pm »
Quote
If you have one capped box you need 2 box more where they dry up nectar.


I've never read this anywhere.  I've always supered when the last super was at least 3/4 full.  I guess I've been waiting too long.

Offline Finsky

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When to harvest honey?
« Reply #4 on: May 25, 2006, 03:27:12 pm »
Quote from: Apis629
[
I've never read this anywhere.  I've always supered when the last super was at least 3/4 full.  I guess I've been waiting too long.


I read this from Australian paper for professionals.

OH Boy you system!  At least 3/4 full.  Normal hive get honey that much in one day when it is yield time.

My  hives  may get from canola  3 box capped honey per week. I had to prepare my hives so. If I do not take honey away every week, hives will swarm. I live 100 miles from hives and I must put hives at least for one week.
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Offline Finsky

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When to harvest honey?
« Reply #5 on: May 25, 2006, 03:50:58 pm »
Quote from: Apis629

  I've always supered when the last super was at least 3/4 full. .


In british Columbia advice it is said that when super is 3/4 capped, it should be removed and extracted.

At the end of June I have often situation that hive  is 4-5 boxes but not a box capped. The room is needed for bees. Fresh nectar is often every where. and if flow stops combs will wait.

When I take hives to canola, there bees fill the rest of missing honey.

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Offline Apis629

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When to harvest honey?
« Reply #6 on: May 25, 2006, 04:39:40 pm »
By "full" I really ment to say, capped.  I've never seen a hive fill more than 1/2 super (medium) in a week.  Either the flows here are really weak or I'm just not making enough room.

Offline Finsky

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When to harvest honey?
« Reply #7 on: May 25, 2006, 05:04:56 pm »
Quote from: Apis629
Either the flows here are really weak or I'm just not making enough room.


You live in Florida. If you have much beehives on area, bees have lack of pastures.  Hives may grow but they do not get surplus honey.

I live in capital city in Finland but my hives are in the corner of land where iare  few beekeprs. I have untouched pastures  at the distance of  10 miles, but not in my cottage yard.

I move bees to better pastures now two times per summer. Our honey season is 1,5 month long.
Many hives get over 200 lbs honey per hive.

Here I prepare my best hive to tranfer to outer pastures.
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Offline Apis629

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When to harvest honey?
« Reply #8 on: May 25, 2006, 06:00:36 pm »
I have 2 yards, each with 2 colonies (about 4 miles apart).  I know there aren't many other nearby beekeepers given I live in St.Petersburg and, outside the cities in the rest of undeveloped pinellas county, they've actually passed an ordinance banning beekeeping.

Offline thegolfpsycho

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When to harvest honey?
« Reply #9 on: May 25, 2006, 06:20:14 pm »
A long time ago, I was helping move a flatbed full of bees in California.  We hit something in the road and got a flat.  The beekeeper asked a farmer if we could set the hives off in his fields until the next weekend. When we came back to get the hives, we couldn't lift them.  They had been across the road from what the beekeeper called safflower.  I've never seen much reference to safflower for making honey, but other seed oil plants like rapeseed or canola, usually make alot of honey.  A very intense flow.

Offline Brian D. Bray

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When to harvest honey?
« Reply #10 on: May 25, 2006, 11:04:41 pm »
Is my science faulty? I thought rapeseed and canola were one in the same? Not that I have any here in the San Juan Islands.
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Offline yoderski

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When to harvest honey?
« Reply #11 on: May 26, 2006, 12:06:31 am »
They are one and the same  canola=rapeseed..
Jon Y.
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Offline thegolfpsycho

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« Reply #12 on: May 26, 2006, 12:17:02 am »
I believe canola is actually a strain of rapeseed developed by canadians.   Canola’s origins date back to an oilseed crop grown in the 13th century called rapeseed. The first edible rapeseed was developed in Canada in 1956, and “canola” was registered as a name for this crop in the late 1970s. Canola was developed by genetically altering rapeseed to reduce the levels of glucosinolates

Guess it's the same only different

Offline Finsky

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When to harvest honey?
« Reply #13 on: May 26, 2006, 03:12:30 am »
I read here explanation.  Canadian Oil  Ltd =   Can-O-La

Canada is the biggest rape seed producer in the world. Plant needs cool moist climate.

Rape word has it's bad side but it is the same plant.

In Finland we plant Canadian varietes which is sowed in May. It blooms in the middle of summer.

Also we have wintering varietes and it blooms at same time as dandelion. It is rare. In England they use winterin plants and that pant is huge compared with our midd summer plants.

Offline Finsky

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When to harvest honey?
« Reply #14 on: May 26, 2006, 03:24:48 am »
Hi Apis

How big are your hives when they are in foraging condition? How many boxes?
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Offline Apis629

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When to harvest honey?
« Reply #15 on: May 26, 2006, 12:10:11 pm »
I crowd all the bees laying in one box and whenever things start to seem conjested I give her a medium ontop of that for 2 weeks.  Then, I find her and place her back in the one deep.  By the time the first honeyflow comes around, I have brood covering most of 8 frames.  The outer two (of the eight) will be mostly honey and pollen but, there's brood there.  In from that there's usually at least 1/2 frame of brood and, in the center 2 or 3 theres brood "top bar to botom bar".

Offline Brian D. Bray

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When to harvest honey?
« Reply #16 on: May 26, 2006, 05:57:55 pm »
That sounds labor intensive something that's a major concern for me.  I prefer to use an unlimited brood box (4 mediums) with a slatted rack between the brood chamber and the supers.  I also use my own vented top/inner top system.   On a good day it looks like a solid wall of bees coming and going from the hives. :lol:
Finsky might say that's strong hive--make much honey.
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Offline SherryL

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When to harvest honey?
« Reply #17 on: May 27, 2006, 08:40:52 pm »
Brian,

Can you share your slatted rack dimensions (depth)?  Also, do you run a top or bottom entrance?

sherry

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« Reply #18 on: May 28, 2006, 12:08:25 am »
Out side demensions are: 19 7/8 x 13 3/4 x 1 3/4.  The 1 3/4 depth allows 3/8 on both sides of the dowels.  For the spacing of holes for the doweling inset 1/2 inch  form each side and then using a frame end peice mark the centers for 8 frames.  That is the center point of the holes.  I thread the 1 inch doweling through the holes so the leangth of the doweling is also 19 7/8.  As we say in Chinook jargon--that's one skookum (strong) rack.

I've had bad luck with top entrances.  I lost more than one hive because the queen moved up into the supers and the hive abandoned the brood down below which caused AFB.  This is of course before I started using slatted racks.  I do not use excluders because I've found them to be swarm generators.
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Offline Apis629

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When to harvest honey?
« Reply #19 on: May 28, 2006, 01:31:04 am »
Abandoning the brood doesn't cause AFB.  AFB is a BACTERIAL pathogen and they need to "catch" it from somewhere.  It can be transfered in honey, on beekeeper's clothing from recently opening an infected colony and old equipment from AFB infected colonies.  For your bees to get AFB they have to eat the spores as a larvae (15 for 1 day old/over 300 after 3 days/ after 6 days=no danger).

Offline Finsky

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When to harvest honey?
« Reply #20 on: May 28, 2006, 02:39:32 am »
Apis! You keep bees too tight. 2-box hives cannot get honey.

Here in Finland apples are just starting to bloom. Dandelions are some. Cherries are just in beatifull bloom

I have in my hive  now mostly three langstroth box and one week later I must start to give fourt boxes.

We have now bad weathers. Temperature is highest about +14C. Bees can just and just fly.

My hives has been too tight. In three hives I found swarming cells.
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Offline Finsky

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When to harvest honey?
« Reply #21 on: May 28, 2006, 02:46:06 am »
Quote from: Brian D. Bray
Finsky might say that's strong hive--make much honey.


If bees not bring me honey it is same if I raise butterfly larvae. It is interesting too.

So I say. Our summer is so short that when nature gives nectar hives must be ready to hit. Hive must be equal 5- 6 langtsroth boxes.

I have had small feral hives 40 years ago. They got 10-20 kg honey. They were impossible to get honey.

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I know people who has 50 cats or dogs in their home. Number of hives means nothing.
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Offline Michael Bush

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When to harvest honey?
« Reply #22 on: May 28, 2006, 11:54:19 am »
Abandoned brood will cause some of the symptoms of AFB, but it will not cause AFB.  Abandoned brood will cause pierced cappings and rotting brood, but the brood will not rope and there is no Paenibacillus larvae spores there and no bacteria causing the problems.

If you had AFB below and the bees moved up it was probably because they sensed it was a bad place to keep the brood nest, not because you had an upper entrance.  I have upper entrances on all my hives and have never seen them abandone brood to move up.
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When to harvest honey?
« Reply #23 on: May 28, 2006, 03:08:35 pm »
MB & Apis629,

You know sometimes our memory can be faulty or we draw the wrong conclusion and then for some reason it sticks in our brain, even when we've learned better.  That's what I get for being a reclusive beekeeper for so many years.

Your remarks set me to thinking, you're right.  The hive I had the problem with was a 12 frame setup that some lady on my paperroute (I was 13) had given me after she found out I had bees.  They were just tucked away in the back corner of her shed.  The AFB spores were probably already in the wood when I got the boxes.  I didn't take them apart and go over them with a blow torch like I should have.
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Offline Finsky

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When to harvest honey?
« Reply #24 on: May 28, 2006, 03:40:13 pm »
Quote from: Brian D. Bray
I've had bad luck with top entrances.  I lost more than one hive because the queen moved up into the supers and the hive abandoned the brood down below which caused AFB.  


Abandon brood near bottom?

Long time ago I looked what happens when I enlarged by putting new box over brood box.  I noticed that bees were not able to keep warm lowest larvae and they ate a lot them away. Part of lowest capped pupae died.

Same happens when I put bottom entrance wide open. Lowest brood get cold.

Third way is to keep too many holes open in upper boxes.

Fourth is to put empty frame in the middle of brood area and so on.

Violent enlargement of brood area is serius question for 1-box and even 2-box hive.

If hive has brood in lowest box, I prefer to open middle entrances than put low entrance totally open for ventilation.  If I need maximun ventilation on canola field, I put entra box lowest. It is vety handy for foraging bees. Otherwise they may hang ovenight on outside of hive.

I check ventilation from the number of ventilating bees.