Hello

[Pepsis]

Hello everyone.

My name is Saša. I live in Serbia, and i started out with two package swarms this June.

I populated two Dadant 10 hives, and this is how they look like. I built everything except one brood box on the right (i was out of wood)

 

[GaryB]

Welcome Pepsis

 

[JWF]

Welcome

 

[madasafish]

 

[B+.]

Saša

Tell us a little about your area. What is the forage like for your bees?

 

[Pepsis]

Hello,
well i live in the dead center of Serbia, and here is a bit difficult as i understand. I say that way because i started this year, and have yet to experience forage conditions "on my skin".

Like in any other part of the world, if one moves his hives for forage from place to place, one can get pretty nice amount of honey. Example, stationary apiaries can bring you anywhere from squat to 20-30 kilos of honey per season, but if you take your hive to sunflower forage North from where i am to province of Vojvodina, you could get quantities from 10-20 kilos up to 100kilos. (This is all per hive.)

For us, smaller beekeepers, and by default stationary, it starts with flowering fruit - hazelnut for pollen in late February early March, and then it gets only more abundant. Peaches, cherries, plum, apple, all the way to the mid April. This year was good on fruits.

Then comes Acacia. But this is very uncertain, and ironically this is mean forage for stationary apiaries. This year we had a lot of rain, fruit honey was used up for hive developments, and acacia was a total fiasco.

After acacia everything is a big gamble. Blackberry, field flowers - grass....

But as i said, if you move to north, where large areas with sunflowers are, you could make a little better use of the year for yourself and for your bees.

My in laws live almost to the Hungarian border, and i plan to make trailer of about 15 hives to move them every year there. Also, i would keep a couple stationary hives for "just in case" and as back up troops.

Note, not everyone is as lucky as me to ave spare time for this, or to have someone to take care and oversee their hives once they arrive to planned area. Many beekeepers suffer great loses due to spraying crops with insecticides, or due to neglect of neighbors who use fire to clean hay from wheat, or from stealing.

This is all by listening of our colleagues, beekeepers. And it all stands logically. Anyway, i did not jump into beekeeping, i considered everything for about two years prior, and it was a good thing, because i have now at least some way of making more or less sound expectations and predictions, as well plans for future.

Cheers!

 

[MartinL]

What does Sunflower honey taste like?
We can get dandelion honey in the spring but not sure if it's similar??

 

[Pepsis]

SUNflower

What does Sunflower honey taste like?
We can get dandelion honey in the spring but not sure if it's similar??

Honestly, IDK. Sunflower is considered a good quality honey, but! Since beekeeper has to move his hives to other region, i never had a chance to try it because none of beekeepers in my area move hives to sunflower fileds. As i said, not everyone has such conditions to move hives. It is rather complex operation.

think about it. If you have less than 20 hives, it would take you either to hire transport, which would eat away a lot of your income, or you would have to own special kind of trailer to move it by your car. Furthermore, guys who own less than 50 hives are more common than those with 100 (which are considered pros). There is family in western Serbia who owns over 2000 hives, and they don't bother to move hives anywhere. They primarily produce swarms, entire apiaries and queens. they don't care about honey.

Sunflower is most abundant, and as such has low price (currently 3.5€ i believe, so it is not economically just to move few hives in order to have few dozen kilos for selling at local markets or from home, or at shows. Honey of value is: Acacia, Tilia, chestnut, Pine, meadow - field wild flowers which is mixed, and others like alfalfa, which is almost impossible to get in Serbia as pure.

these are all the reasons, why few people, not including myself have ever tasted sunflower honey. Even my wife who grew up near field, has never eaten SF honey

I have never even considered trying sunflower honey, now when i think about it.

Sunflower honey is mostly sold right away to confection industry.

 

[Robbo8916]

Hello and

Your posts are very interesting. Always fascinating learning about how beekeeping practices differ in different parts of the world.

 

[Galaxy55]

Sasa - look forward to reading about Serbia and your beekeeping.