Thanks for the reply, wombat. Most people around here run one deep honey super except the year there was a massive bloodwood flow. Before the days of pests and disease the old-timers would often have double honey supers and leave them alone till they were filled, leaving brood comb for years till it was black. But as my mentor says, one super is a lot easier to work. I usually put the frames I want finished first into the middle area, and turn them around if one side is capped and the other untouched. I move brood frames up for various reasons occasionally, but not just to increase the amount of brood. I am finding the good brood hives are also not always the good honey hives. I try to aim for moderately strong. Especially this year, the hives are just booming and swarming. It is hard to get a honey/brood balance. Strong brood hives and a load of honey goes to rearing them.
When we did have the doubles on the good flow, it took months for the honey to be capped. I tried both configurations, full on top or in middle, but I've seen that bees work either way. Some have said they work from the bottom and some have said the top! My conclusion is patience is more necessary than equipment.
I look all the time for what is out in the paddock. In the past 3-4 years there has not been a time when nothing was flowering. But before that, I couldn't have more than a couple of hives at home and I was also feeding for a while because they were so weak with nothing in flower. It was before the rules changed and I could keep hives in town. It is a bit harder to tell if there are flows in town, but the other beekeepers usually tell me if they are extracting, and hives will never starve there.
I am pretty cautious about percentage of capped honey on the frame. I know that in some areas you can basically extract when uncapped, but they say here 90% + is best. I saw a beekeeper in USA extract and questioned it when most of the frames were uncapped. He called it off after testing with a refractometer. That is more accurate than the dripping nectar test. I don't like fermented honey!
I guess I could make more honey if we had the time to chase flowers. But that would make it a full time job and there is a grazing property to look after here as well as my real work. Lifting hives is too heavy for us to do all the time, and we can't drive hundreds of kilometers and monitor the hives as well. I think you are probably in a more suitable honey area. We have also run out of equipment. It's so hard..! :(
Going back to the levy, I haven't read all the documents, but it does seem to say it's payable for honey production at 600kg.. I wonder if you pay it do you have to include the honey given away? We probably give away nearly as much as is sold.
I am still a learner, every time I see them.
Lone
