is it to late to take the honey off

[Dookie]

Hi

Ive not been doing this for long so i dont really have to much knowledge so be nice.

One of my supers is full of honey can i take it off now and give them candy for the winter?

Cheers

Richard

 

[B+.]

One of my supers is full of honey can i take it off now and give them candy for the winter?

Its cutting things a bit fine but its possible if you're quick and the weather is kind to you.
Look at it another way though: do you need the honey more than the bees do?
How big is the colony and do they have enough food to last the winter? If you'd be leaving them a single national brood box, the answer is certainly not. They will need 1 1/2 to 2 nationals. At this time of year, queens are cutting back egg-laying drammatically (I only managed to find 1 colony with any brood at all yesterday). They back-fill the brood comb with any late nectar they can collect (which is very little).
My suggestion would be to leave the honey for the bees (having removed any queen excluder, of course). This will mean they have food for the winter and you won't have to panic feed them in the spring. It becomes more difficult for the bees to evaporate the moisture from fresh nectar / syrup as autumn progresses (aim to have all feeding complete by about the middle of October). The mornings are already quite dewey, so, there is a lot of moisture around.
Incidentally, you would reserve fondant for emergency feeding (possibly in the spring). At this time of year, they need thick syrup (2 parts sugar to 1 part water). That way they don't have to collect water to dissolve the fondant.

 

[dexter's shed]

Hi

Ive not been doing this for long so i dont really have to much knowledge so be nice.

One of my supers is full of honey can i take it off now and give them candy for the winter?

Cheers

Richard

I would normally have said yes, but I too have just left 2 full supers on different hives minus the QX, as I really didn't need it, if you were to place it under the brood nest, you might still get to have some honey if any's left in the new year

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

If the super is full of honey and capped and you decide to leave it on, take the queen excluder away and leave the super where it is - pointless giving the bees more work to shift it about at this time of year.
If you decide to take the honey - do it as soon as possible and then feed some 2:1 syrup - there's still a bit of time, you can always put fondant on later if you feel the need. I know some beekeepers use fondant for winter feeding and nothing else.
You don't mention what type of hives you have - it would make it easier for us to be able to make an assesment if we knew how much space there is likely to be in your hive

 

[B+.]

You don't mention what type of hives you have - it would make it easier for us to be able to make an assesment if we knew how much space there is likely to be in your hive

I agree.
I use Langstoth hives which are about 1.5 times the size of Nationals and about the same as Commercials. It can be a bit of a mindbender for me to think in terms of Nationals as everything is so much smaller.

 

[Chris B]

Not too late to take a super away but time is getting short. Strong syrup will not be a problem for a healthy colony and they will store it away very quickly. Leaving a honey super on over winter might be a necessity on occasion but don't plan to do your beekeeping that way - it might not work out quite as neatly the following spring as people lead you to believe, and makes it difficult to juggle with varroa treatments. If a single broodbox is adequate for the summer it is certainly adequate for winter. If not then you probably need a bigger hive anyway or else double brood, both better options than messing about with supers in my opinion.

 

[BrianO]

Would take it of, heft hive, minus super, is it very heavy to lift one side, dead weight ?

Should be stores in Brood if they have filled super.

Feed good strong syrup, now during good spell ( to finish Sunday ), watch to see if they take down,encourage by dribbling couple of trails from feeder onto frames.

Enjoy the honey !!!

 

[Finman]

.
I am just taking off honey from last hives and I join weak hives and nucs shaking them together.
Weather is good here. 10-13C. It is enough that bees handle the syrup.

Yes, I am badly late, 3 weeks.

Robbers can not fly in this weather.

.

 

[Pete D]

No

 

[pargyle]

I've just taken the supers off mine ... it's a judgement call.

Mine had half filled the brood boxes with stores and there's still the Ivy to come where I live so as long as the weather is good enough for them to fly they usually pick up enough Ivy honey to see them through winter although I will top them up with 2:1 if they don't fill up on the ivy. I'm on 14 x 12 poly boxes and there will be enough in the brood box to see them through. Nice weather down here at present and in an urban environment so they still seem to be finding plenty to go at.

The important thing is to make sure they have enough stores to see them through a 'normal' winter and either learn to heft the hives to check they have enough left or find a way of weighing them on a regular basis so you have some idea of what they have in the way of honey stores.

 

[Into the lions den]

Wow...you are a cautious lot. lol.

We are only in the middle of taking the honey off from the heather and will be at it until the last week of October. Even then we still normally do not have to go to candy/fondant as they still take their syrup down pretty well. We normally finish up with bringing the bees home and feeding them around the first week of November, and poly hives are still perfectly able to take feed at that time even this far north (E. Scotland) and we can give syrup right up to the end of November at Hereford and Cirencester groups.

The ones we are feeding right now are taking 14g down in 2 to 3 days and drawing comb for fun, laying eggs and bringing lots of pollen from balsam and ragwort..plus loads of a red pollen I do not know...and it really is RED...vivid rich scarlet. Those left on the moors are bringing in a pollen I have seen before but not sure what it is, a dayglo light orange, almost need sunglasses to look at the comb. See it some years, maybe one in four on average.

So, in my book, still time to do it.

FWIW, long term, our winter loss figures are no better or worse from the late colonies stripped and home, thus late fed, than those home and fed and set down for winter by mid Sept.

 

[user 6228]

One of the thing to remember about a insulated or high MCR colony is that on cold clear autumn mornings they are up and flying with the sun, collecting pollen, while the low MCR colonies will be still be clustered

 

[Into the lions den]

One of the thing to remember about a insulated or high MCR colony is that on cold clear autumn mornings they are up and flying with the sun, collecting pollen, while the low MCR colonies will be still be clustered

Peerversely its rather the reverse. The wooden ones are often the first to get going as the suns heat seems to penetrate better and the poly ones are somewhat oblivious to conditions outside.

The poly hives are also a tad slower off the mark than wood in spring, but brood longer in autumn.

The late invert syrup taking ( we get a couple of weeks extra with poly late season) is mostly done without the bees flying as is common with normal weaker syrup feeding, and even goes on through the night.

 

[B+.]

The ones we are feeding right now are taking 14g down in 2 to 3 days

I know it was a typo, but, this really made me laugh!

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

I know it was a typo, but, this really made me laugh!

but it was per bee

 

[user 6228]

Peerversely its rather the reverse. The wooden ones are often the first to get going as the suns heat seems to penetrate better and the poly ones are somewhat oblivious to conditions outside.

The poly hives are also a tad slower off the mark than wood in spring, but brood longer in autumn.

The late invert syrup taking ( we get a couple of weeks extra with poly late season) is mostly done without the bees flying as is common with normal weaker syrup feeding, and even goes on through the night.

I'm not talking polystyrene but polyisocyanurate (PIR) with deep (dartington style )entrances. (~0.5Watt/degree).. flying at 8am today. though overnight temps ~ 4C

The devil is in the detail with thermal conductance.

I have seen the behaviour you mention in polystyrene, but in a high conductance model of hive..

There weresignificant conductance differences between retail polystyrene hives I tested .(1.3 to 0.9 Watts per degree C)... Perhaps I should test your model of poly so you can see how it compares.

 

[Into the lions den]

There weresignificant conductance differences between retail polystyrene hives I tested .(1.3 to 0.9 Watts per degree C)... Perhaps I should test your model of poly so you can see how it compares.

I read the abstract you sent, but we are really talking about different things.

I was only mentioning response to outside conditions. The response seems to be slower precisely because of the insulation meaning the hive bees are not experiencing outside conditions as quickly as the wooden ones. In spring the polys do indeed brood up more slowly than wood, but very soon go past them, as they can keep more brood warm per bee.

You are focussing on winter losses, and actually I am in full agreement with the fact winter losses are far lower in poly than in wood. Over the last 15 years the loss rate in poly has been about half of that in wood. In a mild winter the difference is minor but always positive in favour of poly, but i the catastrophic winter loss year a couple of seasons back when 60% was the normal in wood across our area, and our wooden ones were not far shy of that figure, we lost only 15% in poly and it gave us material to rebuild from.


and on the subject of they 14g typo.....yes it made me smile too....at that rate it will take them 6 years to get the winter feed down. It was of course 14Kg....10 litres...of invert syrup. 14g in 2 days....bit like this summer's honey flows...and that was the good days.

and....I am not really a fan of cold weather flying. I know it is a greatly revered trait by Amm fans, but I am happy if they wait till 8 or 9C, as above that it is more likely to be fruitful activity rather than relatively pointless as there will be little to get.

 

[user 6228]

I read the abstract you sent, but we are really talking about different things.

I was only mentioning response to outside conditions. The response seems to be slower precisely because of the insulation meaning the hive bees are not experiencing outside conditions as quickly as the wooden ones. In spring the polys do indeed brood up more slowly than wood, but very soon go past them, as they can keep more brood warm per bee.

You are focussing on winter losses, and actually I am in full agreement with the fact winter losses are far lower in poly than in wood. Over the last 15 years the loss rate in poly has been about half of that in wood. In a mild winter the difference is minor but always positive in favour of poly, but i the catastrophic winter loss year a couple of seasons back when 60% was the normal in wood across our area, and our wooden ones were not far shy of that figure, we lost only 15% in poly and it gave us material to rebuild from.


and on the subject of they 14g typo.....yes it made me smile too....at that rate it will take them 6 years to get the winter feed down. It was of course 14Kg....10 litres...of invert syrup. 14g in 2 days....bit like this summer's honey flows...and that was the good days.

and....I am not really a fan of cold weather flying. I know it is a greatly revered trait by Amm fans, but I am happy if they wait till 8 or 9C, as above that it is more likely to be fruitful activity rather than relatively pointless as there will be little to get.

If you read the whole paper you will see there is something strange about MCR greater than 0.7 when the outside temperatures are nearing zero. That we get confusing ( to us) behaviour in these circumstances is no surprise. That you are seeing different behaviour with MCR above but close to 0.7 compared to MCR very much greater than 0.7 is to be expected.