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Author Topic: When to harvest honey?  (Read 8332 times)

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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Offline Brian D. Bray

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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.

 

anything