HONEY YIELDS

[fizzle]

Honey is measured in lb. or kg. All else is confusion.

Do you not need to put the quantity in metric volume if you are selling it? If I was buying online I would like to know how much liquid is in the jar as pictures can be deceiving. 500ml (1/2 litre) would mean more to me than 1lb or whatever the weight is.

 

[Erichalfbee]

Do you not need to put the quantity in metric volume if you are selling it?

Not in the UK but I do sell 1 litre tubs which come out at 3lb

 

[ericbeaumont]

Do you not need to put the quantity in metric volume if you are selling it?

No.

You are only required by law to label in metric weight.

I don't bother with lb & oz as fewer customers relate to those weights.

 

[gmonag]

Not true. You can display both.
The metric weight has to be in a larger font than the imperial. Plus lots of customers still refer to lbs and oz, as do forum members...

Edit: This makes no sense now after the edit above.

 

[ericbeaumont]

Not true. You can display both.

Do not conflate and confuse.

The law requires weight in metric but does not oblige you - nor forbid you - to hold onto the past and include imperial.

Age of my customer base is under 50 and I reckon most don't relate to imperial.

Times change - price of honey, pound jars, old fashioned labels - and we ought to change with them.

 

[gmonag]

Who is confusing? You said,

You are required by law to label in metric weight only.

 

[Newbeeneil]

Who is confusing? You said,

Maybe Eric's emphasis was not quite right? Maybe he should have said " you are ONLY required by law to label in metric."

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

Maybe Eric's emphasis was not quite right? Maybe he should have said " you are ONLY required by law to label in metric."

 

[ericbeaumont]

You said,

You're right: my wording was misjumbled but now edited.

 

[Hebeegeebee]

In my notes, I generally write how many supers I have taken off so I don't have to take my socks off to count them.
The early part of this year was rubbish with the weather being too cold for the OSR to yield and too cold for the bees to fly for a month or more and colonies were small. Currently they have recovered and are flying well so we'll see what we get. 3 or 4 supers on most colonies at the moment, a few more supers might be distributed around in the next few days.

 

[mbc]

Do you not need to put the quantity in metric volume if you are selling it? If I was buying online I would like to know how much liquid is in the jar as pictures can be deceiving. 500ml (1/2 litre) would mean more to me than 1lb or whatever the weight is.

A litre of honey weighs ~1.6 kg

 

[mbc]

This is a blinding summer flow showing no signs of slowing down, I checked an apiary yesterday with an average of four full supers,( I mean heavy 20lb + extracted honey supers- and I know because I went looking down to the bottom in case any were ripe enough to harvest as I'm out of supers-no such luck! ), supers of foundation drawn out and packed to the sides in the last ten days or so.
It's going to be a long extracting season, I hope the evening temperatures drop or it'll be hot n sticky in my extracting facility.

 

[ericbeaumont]

A litre of honey weighs ~1.6 kg

Yes, the ~ means roughly, as moisture content must vary weight. Mine goes from 13 to 19% but I've not weighed both to compare.

 

[oliver90owner]

Honey is measured in lb. or kg. All else is confusion.

As worker bee indicated, weight is not the same as volume - unless you know the density/SG.

Nothing confusing with volume at all. Most use 10 litre buckets to store their honey?

There are estimates of contents of different frame formats abounding on the internet and in books. Just remember, if asked how much honey there is in a full brood frame, the answer will be NONE! (some may need to think hard about that!). That was just one of the idiot questions, asked on one bb-a question paper.

 

[mbc]

Yeah, thinking about it, reasonably filled 10l buckets weight about 14kg so that would make it ~ 1.4kg / l

 

[REDWOOD]

Some bees I have had were rubbish, lucky to get 40 pounds, best year was 2018 with one hive that produced 150 pound but on average three or four supers
this year isn’t turning out too bad though although the spring was a wash out

 

[Erichalfbee]

Some bees I have had were rubbish, lucky to get 40 pounds, best year was 2018 with one hive that produced 150 pound but on average three or four supers
this year isn’t turning out too bad though although the spring was a wash out

2018 was a year to remember....you're right there. I couldn't keep up with it. I had a Demaree that became dangerously high. But 2019/2020 came along to remind me to be humble about my honey yields

 

[Amari]

I was also going to say equipment?
Drawn comb in supers instead of foundation.
I've seen 9+ supers above colonys which we're on osr, linseed, beans.
Ged marshal queen's.

Does linseed yield honey Curly? We had a field of it locally here last year but I took no notice as I thought it wasn't a honey source.

 

[Curly green finger's]

Does linseed yield honey Curly? We had a field of it locally here last year but I took no notice as I thought it wasn't a honey source.

I've been told so by a bf who has it as part of his migratory beekeeping, but I would have to see them on it to clarify that truely!
Some think not, but then hairy vetch is another crop that beeks think doesn't produce a flow.

 

[Apiarist]

Came across this from Ireland for those that are interested, it's an article re-published (I think) in Four Seasons, the newsletter for NIHBS (Ireland's equivalent of BIBBA), originally published in An Beachaire, the newsletter for FIBKA (the Republics equivalent of BBKA), taken from a ten year study at Ireland's Beekeeping Research Centre at Clonroche; I think this might be the published article from Clonroche, I'm not sure if it's been edited.

https://assets.gov.ie/133282/78b0646e-4286-4913-85ff-a6055bf9216f.pdf
Basically average annual yields are 31.7 kilos per hive from 1966 to 1977, in the south east of Ireland (probably one of the top places for honey bees, due to climate) the article states that "Irish bred black bees" were used. This is naturally before Varroa but after the island was re-populated with bees due to the IoWD.

The bees were kept according to the guidelines laid out in a leaflet called "A blueprint for profitable honey production" published by the Dept. of Agric. and Fisheries.

INTERESTING to note that the honey yields from Heather was an average of 3.2 kilos, not worth the trouble... which is strange, Brother Adam mentioned in one of his books that before WW2 he took his bees to the heather more than 50% of the time, after WW2 less than 50% of the time (depending on the weather and the stage of flowering, I guess???), but I thought that the Heather honey would have been one which the northern dark European bee should have excelled at, if it's supposed to be the best bee for Northern Europe (eps. for Britain and Ireland).