Beemaster's International Beekeeping Forum
BEEKEEPING LEARNING CENTER => GENERAL BEEKEEPING - MAIN POSTING FORUM. => Topic started by: TwT on July 26, 2008, 11:00:41 pm
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I haven't extracted yet but was wondering how everyone did this year with honey, if you would post total jars or pounds and the number of hives you took honey from so we can see the average per hive, if you have a average figured already then post the average pounds per hive and number of hives, and if you dont know and just know how many jars you got then some of us can help figure for you.
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Hive #1: 65 lbs on July 5th.
Hive #1: 30 lbs on July 26th (today)
Hive #2: 28 lbs on July 26th (today)
Hive #1 is a second year Italian hive installed May 2007.
Hive #2 is a first-year Minnesota Hygienic hive installed April 2008.
I'll update again after our last harvest.
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2 hives and no honey this year.
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Ted, our bees are still in the honey making process. As of about a week ago, I saw at least 10 frames throughout the colonies that would be certainly capped by now. We still have over one month that the bees can harvest their golden gold for human consumption. Then come September 1, we do not take any more, we leave all for the bees and we begin to feed sugar syrup, just in case, for the winter stores.....nothing taken after September 1. We can still have a very strong honey flow during September, then around October 5, we no longer feed, the bees will not have time to `cure`any s.s. by that point in time. Did I go off topic, sorry if I have. Beautiful, wonderful day, those golden days of summer. Cindi
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I have 4 hives that where big enough this year and I have over 400 pounds from them.
Next year if they all make it through the winter I will have 13 hive ready to go.
I just put buck wheat out for them to enjoy since every thing else has bloomed already.
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#1 hive five gallons - seven deep frames and four medium frames. Rest left in.
#2 hive - lost two deeps and a medium (all full) to wax moths after a swarm and my messing things up.
These were checked about two weeks earlier, after swarm happened.
#3 hive - part of one deep of pollen (about 70%) total. Left honey in (one medium).
#4 - #7 - not harvested at this time. Waiting until fall to decide and to see if there will be a fall flow.
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I'm with Annette. No honey this year due to building up and losing two hives in June. I am hoping for some next year.
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Hive #1 - 7 shallows (210 lbs)
Hive #2 - 4 shallows (120 lbs)
Hive #3 - 1 shallow ( 30 lbs)
Hives#4 and #5 - Zero
72 lb average
#1 had a new queen --- seems important ;)! #-3-4-5 should have been requeened bekeeper mistake (they were three years old) by my records if not superceded?
I did not take all supers extracted in late May and will leave ample stores for the bees. @ this point #1 has four more shallows and #2 has two more shallows.
Thought you had dun got lost T!!! ;)
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ZERO! Not a good year in southeastern Colorado. I just checkd today with another guy that has 3 hives and he had not one drop of honey in his supers.
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Have 3 hives this year, all new since I lost two over winter.
Hive #1, swarmed very early this year and lost it, ugh, no honey, hasnt even filled two supers yet.
Hive #2, just starting to draw out the medium on top, no honey yet.
Hive #3, have maybe 8 lbs I could harvest, but why bother.
Not a great year for me.
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Ain't harvested yet due to a combination of work and laziness.
...JP
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Ain't harvested yet due to a combination of work and laziness.
...JP
You done burned yourself out this Spring JP, catching all those swarms.
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Between two harvests of 5 hives. All have 2 deeps on them, 3 have medium supers.
67, 1lb jars.
4, 16 oz mason jars.
3, slightly larger mason jars.
2 Wine Bottles.
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About 44 lbs from one deep super and 5 frames from one honey super.
Got this honey from 2 separate hives.
Waiting for bees to make more as we have a long way to go till it cools off.
I have 9 hives now and am pretty sure a few will have enough honey for a second go round.
your friend,
john
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420 kg, or 920 lbs harvested and sold. Plus 200 kg surplus feed and personal use = 620 kg or 1366 lbs total.
That's off 15 hives -
Three were "mature" hives - one existing in spring plus two strong early swarms that built up well before the flow. These all produced 40 kg each, or 88 lbs.
The other 12 were mid-spring nucs (six-10 ¾ depth frames at the end of November), some of which built up exceedingly well, and two of which produced as much as the mature hives, the others built at varying but generally good rates, except for one which produced nothing. So an average of 40 kg for the two strongest nucs, and 22 kg each for the remainder.
On top of harvested and sold honey was our personal use and surplus winter feed stores of about 200 kg. (Surplus winter feed stores are stores over and above the two boxes full that we leave each hive with). The three mature hives and the two strongest young hives produced about 100 kg of that surplus, with the other 10 hives producing the other 100 kg.
Sooo..
Mature hives plus two strongest nucs (5 hives) = 40 kg sold plus 20 kg surplus = 60 kg or 132 lbs each.
Young hives (10) = 22 kg sold plus 10 kg surplus = 32 kg or 70 lbs each.
:) Not bad for a first year.
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Ain't harvested yet due to a combination of work and laziness.
...JP
You done burned yourself out this Spring JP, catching all those swarms.
Nah, combine laziness and heat, not the greatest combination! ;)
...JP
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110# so far with 11 more medium supers to go from 10 hives. 4 were nucs in the spring and 2 were from splits. A good flow this year. Could really have been better but the rain kept coming about every other day or so. Black locust trees bloomed better than ever this year.
Dennis
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About 200 lbs. total so far from 3 of my hives. I didn't take any from the newer hives and my Carnolians didn't produce a whole lot until late since they started out the year as a weaker hive. Fall goldenrod will be my biggest of the year. I expect full supers in each hive, probably totaling 400-500 lbs. We'll see if that happens.
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Extracted from 3 mediums last night. 2 from 1 hive one from another and ended up with 110lbs of honey. Looks like I'll get another chance to harvest about the same in Sept.
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420 kg, or 920 lbs harvested and sold. Plus 200 kg surplus feed and personal use = 620 kg or 1366 lbs total.
That's off 15 hives -
Three were "mature" hives - one existing in spring plus two strong early swarms that built up well before the flow. These all produced 40 kg each, or 88 lbs.
The other 12 were mid-spring nucs (six-10 ¾ depth frames at the end of November), some of which built up exceedingly well, and two of which produced as much as the mature hives, the others built at varying but generally good rates, except for one which produced nothing. So an average of 40 kg for the two strongest nucs, and 22 kg each for the remainder.
On top of harvested and sold honey was our personal use and surplus winter feed stores of about 200 kg. (Surplus winter feed stores are stores over and above the two boxes full that we leave each hive with). The three mature hives and the two strongest young hives produced about 100 kg of that surplus, with the other 10 hives producing the other 100 kg.
Sooo..
Mature hives plus two strongest nucs (5 hives) = 40 kg sold plus 20 kg surplus = 60 kg or 132 lbs each.
Young hives (10) = 22 kg sold plus 10 kg surplus = 32 kg or 70 lbs each.
:) Not bad for a first year.
[wow!!!!!!!!!!!!!! im soo excited to get started!!! but with two hives.... Heather]
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Heather a little tip when quoting, ;) :) :)
Type your stuff after the end quote symbol of another person's post, you know this symbol that you see:
Then your text won't show up in the blue box. To see if you your text has appeared below the blue, push the preview button that is beside the post button and you will be able to see what your post looks like on the forum, a helpful little thing this preview button. Beautiful and most wonderful day, Cindi
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yeah............was kinda wondering about that.....lol thx
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yeah............was kinda wondering about that.....lol thx
I kind of messed up with the "quote" thing on the last post. This is what I was meaning, see my text below your text that has the [ / quote ]. (I had to put spaces in with the "quote" thing to show you so that it didn't quote my sentences here), hope this clarifies a little better than my last post, hee, hee. Darn computer stuff anyways, hee, hee. Have a most wonderful and awesome day, Cindi
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:mrgreen:
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*LOL* Heather, I'd like to say we intended to just have two and 'caught the bug' so to speak... but actually we've intended right from the start to build a business. We're aiming for between 100-300 hives, depending on how intensively we decide to manage them.
I can't tell you how often though during last spring we debated whether we should just have a couple this year while we learn... or maybe 8 because that would be two pallets and kind of a nice number... but definitely not more than a dozen.... unless maybe we found a good deal and maybe we could handle a couple of dozen if the price was right.... and... or... orrrrr...
It's addictive. Truly horribly addictive.
This season (it's coming into spring here now in New Zealand), we're starting with 17 and we aim to add another 20 through splits for 37 total. I can well imagine though that we'll end the season with between 50 and 60. Just depends if we can afford to keep ahead of the equipment requirements.
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OMG! You must have a lot of land? I live in the middle of a neighborhood and the houses arent in arms distance but Im thinking I could go as far as five...if I indeed get "THE BUG" and well, the last time I decided I needed to do something fun and for myself....I planted one rosebush...that ended up to be more than 20 along with everything else I planted!! I went crazy for sure!! so now that I have all these wonderful plants I decided I needed bees to share them with! What do you do with all that lushes gold? LOL
Heather
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OMG! You must have a lot of land? I live in the middle of a neighborhood and the houses arent in arms distance but Im thinking I could go as far as five...if I indeed get "THE BUG" and well, the last time I decided I needed to do something fun and for myself....I planted one rosebush...that ended up to be more than 20 along with everything else I planted!! I went crazy for sure!! so now that I have all these wonderful plants I decided I needed bees to share them with! What do you do with all that lushes gold? LOL
Heather
*LOL* Nope, no land to speak of.. we live on a 500 sq metre section in town... an 8th of an acre or thereabouts. :)
I work in town for a hort consultancy and my husband manages an organic blueberry block which is part of a larger organic cropping farm. When we were thinking of something we could do together to eventually get out of the wage-slave life, we (heaven knows how) came up with beekeeping. We have two hives at home, but the rest are out on the farm. As we grow we'll be looking to start outyards on other farmers properties.
We sell the honey to a local large honey packer. We take our boxes down to them and they do the extraction (for a fee of course) and buy all our honey from us. A week later we go pick up our boxes of wet frames, and a month later the money's all in the bank. Lets us concentrate on being beekeepers rather than honey processors or salespeople.
Later on we'll look at perhaps some niche products, probably picking up on the organic focus, but for now we're focussed on learning to run the bees the best we can.
As for how much honey we eat... uuhhh.. maybe half a cup between us all year, and that's just tasting bits off the hive occasionally. Neither of us are big honey eaters. :roll:
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2 hives, 80 lbs total. One was started this year and supplemented with swarms, so it did really well. There's still almost a full deep of honey in that one.
We'll see if there's a fall flow.
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Horrible year. I got 18 gallons from two hives last year, and 3 gallons from five hives this year. Lots of queenlessness this year and swarming from all of my purvis bees. total bust for honey, but did grow through swarms.i did get 5gallons from a recent cutout which i have been selling as "wild bee honey".
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hive 1: 100 lbs
hive 2: 50 lbs
hive 3: 0
hive 4: 20lbs
hive5: 0
hive 6: 45lbs
rest unk at this time, season still young. I think i will wait until end of augest before i extract, the totals i have are by end weight of supers. acual toatal may vary by a lb or two
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I haven't extracted yet , 5 med supers from 2 hives, both started this spring, not to bad I guess. compared to some. Poor compared to others. Seemed like a good year tho. Just need to get that new extractor. lol always something needed.
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lol always something needed.
seems to always be like that every year even after years of doing this ;)
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hive 1-60#
hive 2-0
hive 3-0
hive 4-0
hive 5-0
not too good so far, it's been cool and wet during major flows
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One hive that is two years old - 8 gallons.
Two hives that are first year hives - 0
Hoping for one more honey flow here in southwestern Virginia!
A friend said to expect golden rod at the end of august. He also said that it doesn't taste very good!
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Some of this is repeat from a post or 2 on main forum, but I thought I would total it all here. It has been unreal!
3 hives, two overwintered and one a 4 lb package hived in April on drawn comb and some stores. All 3 are strong and equal in activity. On 5 July I extracted 18 gallons and reserved 4 frames of perfect capped comb for cut comb pack.
On 8 Aug I extracted 21 gallons and held back 9 frames of capped comb. Thats 156 pounds per hive plus the 12 frames of comb. Each hive now has 2 medium supers of drawn comb back on for the late summer. Will pull it off late Sept.
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Summer drought in our area. It started off well but has been a very dry year.
Hive 1 - 20 lbs spring split
Hive 2 - 0 spring split
Hive 3 - 0 spring split
Hive 4 - 0 spring split
Hive 5 - 20 lbs
Hive 6 - 0
Hive 7 - 0
Hive 8 - 0
Hive 9 - 0
Hive 10 -0
Hive 11 - 60 lbs
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I harvested 220lb from 5 hives the other 5 were empty :-x It was a bad year rain all the time.
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22 pints (30 lbs). 8-)
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3 hives producing this year took 310 pounds of honey and 50 cut comb sections. Average 113 pounds each hive.
12 other hives from splits and swarms did not make extra honey this year. I would not mind a 113 average next year with 15 hives.
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3 hives producing this year took 310 pounds of honey and 50 cut comb sections. Average 113 pounds each hive.
12 other hives from splits and swarms did not make extra honey this year. I would not mind a 113 average next year with 15 hives.
good year Greg, what was your biggest flow source?
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Well the first harvest was mainly Locust. Then this second is basically wildflower and clover. One hive is in the city and the other two are in the woods with some farm land around. It is all pretty light in color.
I feed them lots of sugar water too that probably helps some. LOL thats a joke :-D
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Hive #1 - Unknown (havent harvested it yet but has a ross round on top, 3 shallows, and a deep that I put on for them to clean up from a dead hive that they filled with honey)
Hive #2 - 30lbs plus a medium and another deep that havent been harvested yet.
Hive #3 - Dead
Hive #4 - Dead
Hive #5 - Dead
Hive #6 - Nothing, still too new (caught as a swarm)
Sean Kelly
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wow. I live in Cincinnati. It was a good year for us around here. I have 5 total hives. 2 of them are re-starts since I lost them over the winter. I did a split from my own bees. The 2 new starts are doing so well I had to add supers to them. I was shocked. So far I have taken 3 supers off and got 85 lbs of honey!!!! I am taking off the remainder of the supers this week to get them ready for winter. There is such a honey flow still till end of Sept. I will let you know about how much more honey we harvest. I do have comb honey coming off as well.
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first year,7 hives to work with,5 were captured swarms,and 2 were bought packages( 1-Italian,1-Russian) we have gotten 20 gal of honey so far.Russians are by far the best producers so far followed closely by the Italians,the the first swarms caught in late march are a close third. all in all i would have to say it was a good year.by the way what does a gallon weigh.thanks
bill
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A gallon of honey weighs 11.8 pounds, honey's specific weight is 1.5, that be one half again the weight of water, beautiful, most wonderful days, Cindi
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Our first hive produced 26# from 1 Illinois super. It still has another full super on it which I'll pull in the next 2 weeks in anticipation of brazilian pepper, which I will leave for them over the winter months. It's supposed to be "baker's grade."
Split the hive so looking forward to double the honey next year!
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well I finally extracted, didn't take but a few supers, moved a lot around to help winter stores for new hives (I started this year) that were kinda light, my hives had a wide averaged about 60-120 pounds each, I took a total of around 20 gallons of honey for my regular customers. it could have been better but it could have been worst also, with the drought I expected the worst like last year but all hives except about 12 I started this year had good stores and now all do, hoping for a fall flow, been a few years since the hives smelt like feet (goldenrod), a few years ago they filled up almost 2 supers each but the last 2 years nothing for a fall flow, been feeding sugar syrup buy the truck loads, hope to not have to do that much this year.
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I have one hive established last year from a package and three new packages and a split from the established hive. One of the packages was a top bar hive and built up so fast they swarmed multiple times so no honey there but between all the other hives they made 115lbs of honey and the flow this year wasn't very good since the sweet clover didn't bloom at all in my area so they had to find what they could which was mostly dutch and purple clover and it was scattered also a few wild flowers the fall flow looks OK but I'm going to let them have that. I expect better results next year since sweet clover is biannual also hope to ad three more packages and split as many of the hives I already have as allowable at this rate I'm going to need another yard soon. The wife use to think I was crazy but since she took all the honey to work and it sold itself this crazy beekeeper is starting to look kind of smart. she would have sold it all if I had not stopped her so I could keep some. :-D
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2 Hives
Total 77 pounds with more on the way.
Cheers
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Update:
Hive #1: 65 lbs on July 5th.
Hive #1: 30 lbs on July 26th
Hive #2: 28 lbs on July 26th
Hive 1 + 2: 156 lbs on September 1st
Running total = 279 lbs (2 hives) with more on the way...
Hive #1 is a second year Italian hive installed May 2007.
Hive #2 is a first-year Minnesota Hygienic hive installed April 2008.
I'll update again after our last harvest.
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I'm a first year beekeeper here in Northern Kentucky. I got 36 lbs total between two hives. I'm pleased as punch!
Not all the frames looked like this one, but this was my favorite.
(http://img515.imageshack.us/img515/6638/dsc4528zk5.th.jpg) (http://img515.imageshack.us/my.php?image=dsc4528zk5.jpg)
My beekeeping blog: www.nkybeekeeper.com (http://www.nkybeekeeper.com)
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I'm a first year beekeeper here in Northern Kentucky. I got 36 lbs total between two hives. I'm pleased as punch!
Not all the frames looked like this one, but this was my favorite.
(http://img515.imageshack.us/img515/6638/dsc4528zk5.th.jpg) (http://img515.imageshack.us/my.php?image=dsc4528zk5.jpg)
My beekeeping blog: www.nkybeekeeper.com (http://www.nkybeekeeper.com)
You should be pleased,it kinda makes you want to dip a divet of it out with your fingers doesn't it? :)
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I read the blog and it looks like the whole family had so much fun. Wonderful blog you have there as well. I will have to keep checking back on it.
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Here in Holly Michigan we have 2 hives started in late April.
We just did our honey harvest this weekend.
I figure there's about 90 lbs. total. We left about 80-90 lbs. for the bees.
The hive are very healthy and I guess they like it here in Holly!!...Go Bees :-D
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Pulled 5 mediums and fed some hives that needed it today. Have more to pull, but its a start, and...
My bees are making honey now as well.
...JP
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Hi,
3 hives, one super on each hive with 2 broodboxes separated by a queen excluder.
Results: broodboxes packed with honey, supers completely empty!
My friend has 2 hives with exactly the same results.
Next year absolutely no queen excluders.
Anybody have any comments?
Thanks,
Rich
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Hi,
3 hives, one super on each hive with 2 broodboxes separated by a queen excluder.
Results: broodboxes packed with honey, supers completely empty!
My friend has 2 hives with exactly the same results.
Next year absolutely no queen excluders.
Anybody have any comments?
Thanks,
Rich
Yeah, many on this site don't use excluders, myself as well. Sounds to me your bees were hungry and needed what was in the top super or just didn't like the excluder.
I would remove the excluder and quite possibly the top super, if you don't have enough bees to cover what's below and the top super.
With too much extra space its that much more difficult for them to mantain heat during their winter cluster.
...JP
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2 Hives, (using queen excluders) final 2008 season tally: 312 lbs
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2 Hives, (using queen excluders) final 2008 season tally: 312 lbs
How did you ever do that much? How many supers made up each hive?? WOW, that is so great.
I have 2 hives and zero honey this year. I will never have that much out here because of our drought conditions in the summer the bees do not make so much honey.
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I was only able to spin out the capped which was 4 shallow boxes partially filled. We netted 80lbs. I have 9 shallows still on waiting to be capped. Hopefully in two weeks we'll finish.
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2 Hives, (using queen excluders) final 2008 season tally: 312 lbs
How did you ever do that much? How many supers made up each hive?? WOW, that is so great.
I have 2 hives and zero honey this year. I will never have that much out here because of our drought conditions in the summer the bees do not make so much honey.
Annette,
I'm so sorry about your missing honey this year. Are your bees healthy?
Our bees just amazed us this year. I don't know how to explain it. But from others I've talked to who have been doing this much longer, 150 lbs per hive is closer to a typical season. Then maybe it's just the first "typical" season we've had.
We had a very hot and dry July (http://beesandblooms.blogspot.com/2008/07/hottest-july-on-record.html) here with absolutely zero precipitation from June 4th through the end of July at my house. May and August were about normal but spring was also late and very dry. But my little 2 acre plot is not enough to sustain them, no matter how many blooming things I've got in my yard so they are finding it somewhere.
One of the colonies was brand new (http://beesandblooms.blogspot.com/2008/04/minnesota-hygenics.html) this spring and had to start from just a 3 lb package! They were fast to build up and very productive even though there were a bit "hot" to handle. (Minnesota Hygienic). Our other colony is a 2nd year Italian queen from Georgia. They were troopers too but never complained or got bothered about the four times we stole the honey. (I wish I could clone that queen.)
At any given time, we had no more than 6 supers loaded on the hives (3+3) because that is all we own.
Thinking back over it, I've been trying to understand what went right this year. I suppose one big factor was that we had fully drawn comb on most of the supers we put out this year for the first time. That is we reused comb from supers we had previously harvested. That helped a lot. It seems like it takes them forever to pull the first comb from those plastic foundations. Also we harvested a total of four times (which was a pain) but because we ran out of supers and one of the hives was so tall we had to use a ladder (http://beesandblooms.blogspot.com/2008/07/another-honey-harvest.html) to open it we were forced to take some out mid-season. When we did, we just returned the freshly harvested supers right away and that always gave them a headstart on the next batch. Healthy bees + constant nectar flow (from somewhere?) + plenty of ready to fill storage place = great harvest.
We really enjoyed the difference in the flavor from each harvest, they seemed to get better each time. Even with all that, we put away about one full super of partially capped honey frames that we may feed back to them in the late winter.
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They are good now.I had many problems this summer when one hive went laying worker and the other hive got wax moths. I lost the laying worker hive, but saved the wax moth hive. I guess because of all this they never made enough honey for either me or them. I am feeding 2 hives now and they are looking great.
Also we had a very bad drought out here not having any rain since last February and heard from many beeks that their hives did not give any extra honey.
Next year will be better (Isn't that an old beekeeping saying??)
Anyway I am very happy for you. Even on a good year, the average per hive out here, I am told, is about 65 lbs maximum.
Take care
Annette
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We had a great year, lots of rain early in the summer that really kicked the July flow into high gear. We had lots of rain in August too, so I was hoping for a good fall flow...but nada...
For the year, around 550+ lbs total:
Hive#1: a 2 queen hive that swarmed probably 4 or 5 times, plus I took some bees/brood for a split, ~40 lbs
Hive #2: 60#
Hives #3,#4: Somewhere around 300# togather. I think #4 did a bit better, though.
Hive #5: Zero. Bad case of chalkbrood that took till around July before the requeening cleared that up.
Hive #6: perhaps 150#
I also took some cut comb, but that was only a few frames.
Rick
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Final totals are in on a pretty good year for our little operation. To recap previous harvests:
3 hives, two overwintered and one a 4 lb package hived in April on drawn comb and some stores. All 3 are strong and equal in activity. On 5 July I extracted 18 gallons and reserved 4 frames of perfect capped comb for cut comb pack.
On 8 Aug I extracted 21 gallons and held back 9 frames of capped comb for our cut comb honey jars. Each hive was given 2 wet medium supers for the late summer crop.
On Wed, 15 Oct I pulled off the 6 mediums, half of which were mostly uncapped but full combs of honey. I attempted to dry that honey stacked over a light bulb in garage. It tested 20% so decided to fill extractor with 4 of these frames along with 5 totally capped frames which tested at 15% The result was a blend testing at 16% to 17% yielding 12 more gallons of honey.
So that is 51 gallons for 3 hives on 3 harvests. Thats 600 pounds of honey plus the 9 frames of comb honey used in the cut comb pint jars. If they had 4 pounds of honeycomb per frame, add another 36 pounds to the total for 636 pounds or a 212 pounds per hive average. We are amazed at inner city honey flow.
Now comes the task of seeing these hives through 'til April. Bee well, everyone!
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15 honeybee hives , extracted about 90 pounds per hive on average , we had a good year for honey. :-D
but we had a bad year for mites , we had to mediacte all of our hives this year.
:(
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Despite losing a young hive to robbing, we had a harvest of 500# for 9 colonies. Wonderful spring and fall flow. Great year!!! It is like the game of golf. You have a super shot and just want to do better next game! The bees and I (well, maybe not so much in unison...) are really looking forward to next year. :lol:
Haven't spent much time on the forum this summer, glad to see everyone is doing well and for the most part had a great season.
Dennis
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Wonderful harvest Dennis. Glad to see you back
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Started out with eleven hives, we're down to eight - from up in Maine we got ~140 pounds off of three hives, down here we only got ~60 lbs from four - it was definitely not a good year around here for honey, other club members in our area report similarly small harvests. Oh well, there's always next year!
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Well I finally extracted this is a late post but wanted to add my two cents..., I have a total of 72lbs surplus after the bees got to keep what they needed for winter. That was from accentually two hives, I have two more but they where late splits, and had some other issues. For my first year,, I'm pleased. Next year hopefully even better.
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We produced 3,200 lbs of honey this year. We have approx 800lbs left. Very high demand again this year. I always have more calls needing pollination, nucs, queens, or honey than I can supply each year. Good problem to have I guess. Still frustrating sometimes to send people to someone else.
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Wow dan!!! 3200 lbs!!!
I could swim in that much!!!I could try to eat my way out!!!
your friend,
john
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There are guys on here that produce alot more honey than I do! ;) Just ask Bjornbee and Bullseye Bill if they'll share their totals!
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There are guys on here that produce alot more honey than I do! ;) Just ask Bjornbee and Bullseye Bill if they'll share their totals!
Dan, You produced about 2,000 pounds more than me this year. Your a big operator compared to me and my lowly output production. :-D
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Well, you guys are gonna laugh at me!!! We had the worst imaginable year. Of my 9 colonies, I did not have even enough to think about extracting, I crushed and strained. I think that I have about 6 gallons (that be 11.8 pounds per gallon, I can't do the math, hee, hee). I could have obtained more, but I focused on the bees this winter and left them lots of honey, I didn't feed them sugar syrup, so we'll see how they fair and how their building up in the spring is. Beautiful day, beautiful life, beautiful, beautiful, health. Cindi
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Dan, You produced about 2,000 pounds more than me this year. Your a big operator compared to me and my lowly output production. :-D
That's apparently because you are a nuc and queen production KING! :-P
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Well, you guys are gonna laugh at me!!! We had the worst imaginable year. Of my 9 colonies, I did not have even enough to think about extracting, I crushed and strained. I think that I have about 6 gallons (that be 11.8 pounds per gallon, I can't do the math, hee, hee). I could have obtained more, but I focused on the bees this winter and left them lots of honey, I didn't feed them sugar syrup, so we'll see how they fair and how their building up in the spring is. Beautiful day, beautiful life, beautiful, beautiful, health. Cindi
Now why would anyone laugh at you? You get the last laugh... you had alot more free time than I did!!! :-D
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Dan, You produced about 2,000 pounds more than me this year. Your a big operator compared to me and my lowly output production. :-D
That's apparently because you are a nuc and queen production KING! :-P
you got a point there, raising nuc's and queens you do use a lot of you honey frames, especially the nuc part.
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First year.
Took 110# total, from six hives. The nice thing is, I went from zero frames of drawn comb to over 300 medium frames. :-D
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Hi,
I took 3 harvests per hive this year and the average was 60 lbs per hive per harvest - so each hive produced about 180 lbs this year.
I'm not using national/langstroth I'm using the Dadant DB (which is the most common over here).
How many harvests a year do you guys get? (I get one in the spring and two in the summer).
Paul.
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Paul, update your profile please so we know your location, sounds like a real good year.
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Hi,
I took 3 harvests per hive this year and the average was 60 lbs per hive per harvest - so each hive produced about 180 lbs this year.
I'm not using national/langstroth I'm using the Dadant DB (which is the most common over here).
How many harvests a year do you guys get? (I get one in the spring and two in the summer).
Paul.
Hi Paul
I harvest whenever I run out of honey supers. Usually 2x a year, mid summer and late summer. Sounds like your hives go gangbusters! I averaged 110 lbs per hive for the year.
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Hi Scad,
that's a respectable figure from two harvests.
The reason I do three is purely because of my altitude and location in comparison to agriculture - it also allows me to specify exactly what type of honey I'm selling.
With regard to the timing - it's quite interesting over here. After the spring harvest, if you leave it a week or two too late then they will empty the hive because there's a natural gap between the local crops coming into flower and the natural stuff coming into flower - so by removing the spring stuff when I do I'm effectively forcing them to forage further afield (where there is loads of stuff).
In the summer I could just stack supers on till August but then I'd end up with honey that was a mix, where as by doing to seperate harvests in the summer (three if the weather is really weird) then I can say with a degree of certainty that the first summer harvest is just forest honey with some forest flowers, however the second harvest I can say with certainty that the VAST majority of it will be sun flower and / or clover.
The market over here is a little more 'choosy' so being able to make these distinctions makes a difference come sales time (and there are obvious differences in the different type of honey such as colour, taste, time to crystalise, etc).
Paul.
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The market over here is a little more 'choosy' so being able to make these distinctions makes a difference come sales time (and there are obvious differences in the different type of honey such as colour, taste, time to crystalise, etc).
Paul.
That is interesting...I get two different types of honey depending on when I harvest. My market is choosy too, prefering the later summer honey since the spring honey is stronger flavored and almost minty. I got sick of trying to describe what honey was what and just started combining them back together for simplicity. That and I'd end up with all spring honey and no summer honey. Much simpler to have just one kind.
Rick
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with the drought's the last couple of years here we have really only had one flow a year, black berries and such which bloom first the bee's mostly used to raise brood, about the only surplus we got has been tulip poplar, easy to tell, just hold it towards the light and it is a dark red colored.
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There are guys on here that produce alot more honey than I do! ;) Just ask Bjornbee and Bullseye Bill if they'll share their totals!
I pulled just over 5000 pounds this year, I hope I didn't pull too much as I didn't really get them fed up to the point I wanted to for the winter. It was about a 60 pound per hive year, a little bit better than average for Kansas.
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I started with 2 hives that were 2 years old. I bought 4 pakages in April. Ended up spliting one of the new hives. I made one harvest the last week of August. At harvest time I had 7 hives total. My total production was about 310lbs.
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I pulled just over 5000 pounds this year, I hope I didn't pull too much as I didn't really get them fed up to the point I wanted to for the winter. It was about a 60 pound per hive year, a little bit better than average for Kansas.
sounds like a good year bill, what did you do with it all if I may ask?
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I put it in five gallon buckets. I also labeled them Spring, Fall, and Mini Melter.
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Man BILL!!! Thats alotta honey!!!
You must work them bees pretty hard huh? I mean, You must work your buns off!!!
Do you still eat honey??
your friend,
john
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I do! But it's mostly fermented. :D
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Thats a GAS!!! :-D
your friend,
john