Honey Weight Estimation

[monkeyfish]

Greetings,

Well, my first year has been a bit of a bungle, yet very educational!  

I'm trying to estimate just how much honey I've got and should I take any.
I had my colony swarm in August and now have a new queen.
What I'm left with now is:

1- lower deep with about 1 frames worth of capped honey and lots of empty comb.
1- upper deep with 3 frames worth of capped honey/pollen/few brood.
1 - medium super with 8 or 9 frames full of honey.

>Does this sound like about 45lbs total?
>Dare I take any for myself (i.e. since the split has reduced the population/winter honey requirement?)

>Is it okay to leave this configuration for winter <ie. with the medium on for their consumption>?


Hopefully we can make it thru the first winter and a better year in 2005.

Thanks,
~Scott

[golfpsycho]

If the medium is harvestable, I would probably take it.  and start feeding them 2/1 as fast and as long as they will take it.  I don't know much about your winters, but I imagine they are pretty long and cold.  Another alternative might be to move the capped honey to the outside of the bottom deep, pull the 2nd deep, and leave the medium for food.  Even if you did this, I would still feed them syrup to get them tipped off.  Also consider, by spring, they will be up in the medium raising brood.

[Finman]

dublicate, cant delete

[Finman]

Greetings,

Well, my first year has been ... very educational!  

It is very good idea to estimate measure of honey outside hives.

I am very good at this issue. You can learn when you weight the box before and after exraction.

Full Langstroth box, 70% capped,  has 25 kg honey.

Full faffar box in my system has 16 kg honey. I use 8 frames in 9 frames space. So combs are fat.

When I clear the hive from honey, I can calculate the volume of honey. Often I took  60 kg (120 lbs) honey at one time. It is 2 Langstroth + 1 Farraf, all capped.

When honey summer is in the middle of July,  2/3 honey yield is in hives. Mostly I am able to predict my yield.

You can learn when you weight boxes and when you predicts are working, it is sign you have learned.

After that I can calculate, how much bees consume honey when wether is bad fo long time.  In 3 weeks they consume 15 kg they uncapped yield.
 
It also important so see, how much more big box tower gather honey 5-6 box, and how much 3-4 box hive. You can see, that it is usefull to put together  those 3 box hive, or you can make 2 hives from three 4 box hives. 3 hives  x 4 boxes = 12 /2 = 6 boxes in 2 hives.

I do that much during summer.  Or I put together  nuc with one box full of brood + big hive without brood (after swarming).

[Anonymous]

Monkeyfish,
What you have appears to be 45 - 50 pounds of honey total.
I would suggest leaving the medium and top hive body as they are and remove the bottom deep. I don't think you want to leave the bees with little or no food to make it through the winter. If you pull the medium now and take the honey from it, you will be relying on the bees packing away enough to make it through the winter based on how much you feed them. Remember as you said, there aren't too many bees left since you had a recent swarm and there won't be too many bees able to process any syrup into honey before it gets too cold for them to evaporate it.
Take whatever honey is in the bottom deep and leave the rest for the bees, otherwise I think you'll have to plan on starting over next year.