10%

[For want of a better word]

Are you legally allowed to call 'honey' from sugar syrup actually honey??

Chinese honey /cooking honey... for my money .. it ain't honey !

 

[TOBY-3652]

Had 3 hives last year and got 220 lb all osr this year.. 7 hives and 200lb osr and 140lb of balsom honey.. Nice tasting it is

 

[richardbees]

"Not good for English Honey quality if it gets out that some supply Tate and Lyle best honey!"

Some of the above posts indicate a few beekeepers may have what the Army call "bad drills" - as I don't feed syrup onto supered hives!

I've got about 120 lbs after starting the season with two hives....my honey crop was taken off united colonies following swarming after artificial swarm procedures - I was up to 6 hives by June.

Which is why I described it as the swarmiest year ever!

 

[YorkshireBees]

Well done, many Yorks people are reporting it to be awful, including some serious professionals.

However............cannot resist (and this is with a smile on my face) questioning the maths.

An increase by 200% is a tripling of crop, yet you nearly doubled your numbers but productivity stayed about the same per colony? Would be an increase of nearly 100%


Kind regards,

PedantsRUs

Your right of course I should have said 100% increase
I guess maths wasn't my strong point this afternoon, I even questioned myself about whether that was correct and then got distracted and posted anyway!

Just been to a local bka meeting where the few people I talked to were well down on this years harvest. Even the local semi-pro indicated he had the same results as me, ok for OSR spring crop but very little after!

 

[susbees]

You did well YorkshireBees, I went from over 100lb last year with 4 hives to 20lb with 10 hives. I think my forage came when the weather was bad, also I didn't take the hives to the heather or have OSR near by. So, change of plan next year.
regards
Steven

And the bee farmer I spoke to the other night said Sheffield was one of the best areas in the country this year

 

[BeeNice]

How did you increase your 4 hives to 10?

If this is from AS and splits then given the year you have not done to bad. If your 9+ colonies are fit and strong going into the winter they should all been well give you buckets of honey next year providing that is you don’t expand to 20+ hives next year

Good luck for next year.

Collecting swarms mostly, that no-one else would want or could deal with. Some where splits, not because I wanted too, but because I needed to. Spend the year making up hive bits and nuc boxes because I kept running out of space, gave away swarms and helped with others.
The bees are fit and strong, I started to feed about 4 weeks ago, to build them up, the Ivy and HB are still going strong here. I don't want more than 10 hives anyway. I haven't had a bad year, its been an education. But no honey to off set the cost. I made a mistake earlier I started with 6 hives.
Hoping for a better year next year, I hope your honey bucket over-flow-if (?) over.
Steven

 

[BeeNice]

And the bee farmer I spoke to the other night said Sheffield was one of the best areas in the country this year

Judging from the feed back I have from other beekeepers in the area, both Sheffield and Rotherham ain't had a good year, unless it was from the heather or OSR which seemed to have flowered for every this year. I will be looking into moving some hives to the OSR next year.
Steven

 

[alanf]

Very patchy is what I hear. Within a couple of miles, anything from nothing to average. I have done OK. We started with a good early burst of flowering trees locally (ornamental and fruit), for many in less sheltered areas that would have missed the decent March weather. The foraging was stop/start rather than continuously poor and there was usually something available in a suburban setting when there was a weather window.

What was seriously lacking was a period of good weather long enough for mating. If the sun shone, it was too windy and v.v. If you had a good percentage mated well you were very fortunate. Ending the season with under 50% of emerged queens mated and looking good going into winter seems to be a frequent tale.