Honey harvests last few years

[richardbees]

QM

fair enough!

 

[Into the lions den]

I make apiaries with less than 25 colonies, I guess that you can't do that with 2000 colonies.
.

Yes you can....we had 119 actual active apiaries on our round at OSR time this spring. We have less at heather time as many of those locations can take far more without the law of diminishing returns coming into play.

 

[Hivemaker.]

Sure you can do 5T with 24 productive hives.

What line of Queens head your hives,AMM.

 

[beebreeder]

If it is AMM then that confirms one thing !!!!!!

 

[Hivemaker.]

If it is AMM then that confirms one thing !!!!!!

That you are really a prostitute.

 

[beebreeder]

No Pete AMM are known for slow buildup and small broodnests also smaller than average honey crop, who would want my body anyway

 

[QueenMaster]

small brood nest ?

Mine are doing 5 supers of brood nest in summer, twice from standard.
They are wintering on 3 to 5 supers.

Halves of year swarms are on 3 supers and the other on 2 supers.

2 supers dadant = 1 brood box dadant

Call me "Le pimp"

 

[BeeJayBee]

2 supers dadant = 1 brood box dadant

Same as Jumbo Langs -> 2 "supers" = 1 "brood" (2 shallow = 1 deep).

I was thinking about experimenting with the same setup this coming season, using shallows only. Didn't think I'd have much to lose, it would mean only one size of frames and boxes, but could fairly easily go back to the more traditional deep if I don't like it.

Why do you use only shallow boxes?

 

[QueenMaster]

I only use shallow because :
It's lighter
I got the same frame size for all
I can put plastic frames instead of wood frame and wax.
I can adapt size to colonies (1 to start a swarm, then 2, 3 ...).

I'm doing nucs in half a shallow.
Same frame for all, that a big nucs but it can resists to bad weather condition.

I don't put 2 nucs in a shallow, because all bee workers are going where the queen has the more pheronomones, so it's really an independant 5 frames shallow as a nuc.

 

[REDWOOD]

last year was rubbish and this year good...ish, Although It was wetter this year the temperatures were higher than last year, drizzle did not put the bees off foraging but did stop farmers cutting their hay which allowed for a good crop of clover honey

 

[Swarm]

last year was rubbish and this year good...ish, Although It was wetter this year the temperatures were higher than last year, drizzle did not put the bees off foraging but did stop farmers cutting their hay which allowed for a good crop of clover honey

Sorry REDWOOD, that's a random statement. In the matter of a few miles only, I would certainly disagree with you, I wasn't applying emergency feed on the hives in Spring/Summer of 2011!!
I don't mean to sound picky (sorry if it appears so) I've noticed your sig and mine would read the opposite, worked outdoors for 34 years and you tend to remember your soakings, frostbite, etc.

 

[richardbees]

I only use shallow because :
It's lighter
I got the same frame size for all

QM

IThat's the advantage of using Dadant - I'm stuck with an accumulation of either supers or brood,.

Sorry you're getting some aggressive posts from here (seeing as how your country gave the world B Bardot) Where are you in France - maybe explains difference from our norms?

rb

 

[REDWOOD]

Sorry REDWOOD, that's a random statement. In the matter of a few miles only, I would certainly disagree with you, I wasn't applying emergency feed on the hives in Spring/Summer of 2011!!
I don't mean to sound picky (sorry if it appears so) I've noticed your sig and mine would read the opposite, worked outdoors for 34 years and you tend to remember your soakings, frostbite, etc.

Where in south wales are you ? No emergency feed this year, they collected almost a full super by the end of march that supplied them with enough food until the clover flowered, I did think that farmers had sprayed herbicides last year it was so bad and did not pic up until the HB was flowering
NO random statement just
Sorry for the opposites but there must be some logical exclamation, local forage micro climate who knows, caught me out a bit and had to order some frames for empty supers as they went on to fill 3

 

[REDWOOD]

Taken from the met office;
To complete the disappointing picture, it has also been a relatively cool summer with a mean temperature of 13.9 °C, some 0.4 °C below the long term average. Despite this it was a little warmer than the summer of 2011 which saw a mean temperature of only 13.7 °C.

 

[Swarm]

No, it's a fact of your area, maybe? The MO also said Spring 2012 was the driest since xyz. It was pouring on a daily basis here.
You said 2011 was rubbish and 2012 was good..ish. Not here. There again, I could drive a few miles and things would be quite different.
You are spot on, I think, when you mention micro climates and this is noticeable almost every year. The heatwave in April 2011 provided my bees the opportunity to fill many supers, enough to extract a crop if I'd wanted.
Given temperatures, would clover yield anything/much anyway? I thought it needs 21 degrees to offer a flow?

 

[REDWOOD]

yep seen bees allover the clover this year very light honey and did taste like clover, clover and blackberry was the only thing that was of great amounts this year apart from apple trees and gorse early on

 

[QueenMaster]

That's the advantage of using Dadant - I'm stuck with an accumulation of either supers or brood,.

Well, at first I choose what was written and told in books, beekeeping associations, and beekeeper's stores : use dadant standard (10 frames brood box and 9 frames shallows), wood frame, wax.
But i was ashamed managing different frame sizes, different wax size and spending my week-ends waxing frame and spoiling my kitchen. I made thousands of kilometer to find wax and frames. So I'll decide, I will not continue like that, my garage was full of frames and wax I was spending hours for waxing instead of visiting my bees.

I found an interesting system but it was use only by the manufacturer of it. It was critized by almost everybody but they didn't try it. I also noticed that this guy have between 2 and 5% of winter loss and producing loads of honey with far less colonies. So I get information and I compute that it would be cheaper and simpler to do beekeeping. This standard is rarely sold in beekeeper's shop this is dadant divisible (10 frames brood box is replaced by 10 frames super) brood chamber can be adapted to 1, 2, 3 shallows. I convert my hive and replace wood and wax by plastic frames and my loss have dropped, I have almost no wintering loss. This was a big bet, but I don't regret it.

You can get something similar in UK for example for a UK national hive :
use a shallow put 12 frames instead of 11 in a shallow.

Best in UK is to use langstroth super with plastic frames like these :http://www.paynesbeefarm.co.uk/frames-flat-packed/plastic-frames-for-langstroth-super/

Unfortunately dadant divisible and plastic dadant frames are not sold in UK.

Waxing plastic frames is useless when colonies are in full plastic they accept it readily. it took me one year to convert my hives to 100%
plastic I put a plastic frame between wood and frame and wait, at the end I got couples of hives with traditional wood and wax and all died last winter so now I'm in full plastic. I got 1 loss with plastic out of 20.

 

[richardbees]

QM thanks for sensible advice but, truth be told, I'm now a bit too old to re-stock !