Honey Harvest Totals 2008

[2-Wheeler]

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 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 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 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. 

[annette]

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

[Scadsobees]

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

[utahbeekeeper]

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!

[bluequeenb]

15 honeybee hives , extracted about 90 pounds per hive on average , we had a good year for honey.
but we had a bad year for mites , we had to mediacte all of our hives this year.
 

[DennisB]

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.

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

[annette]

Wonderful harvest Dennis. Glad to see you back

[reinbeau]

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!

[MustbeeNuts]

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.

[Dan Williamson]

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.

[johnnybigfish]

Wow dan!!! 3200 lbs!!!
 I could swim in that much!!!I could try to eat my way out!!!

your friend,
john

[Dan Williamson]

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!

[BjornBee]

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. 

[Cindi]

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

[Dan Williamson]

Dan, You produced about 2,000 pounds more than me this year. Your a big operator compared to me and my lowly output production. 

That's apparently because you are a nuc and queen production KING! 

[Dan Williamson]

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!!!   

[TwT]

Dan, You produced about 2,000 pounds more than me this year. Your a big operator compared to me and my lowly output production. 

That's apparently because you are a nuc and queen production KING! 

you got a point there, raising nuc's and queens you do use a lot of you honey frames, especially the nuc part.

[Carriage House Farm]

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. 

[Paul33]

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.

[TwT]

Paul, update your profile please so we know your location, sounds like a real good year.