still... 15lbs isnt too bad! Looking at your pictures though those monster trucks cant be cheap to run!
The trucks are actually the least of our concerns, they are agricultural vehicles doing agricultural work, which means so long as they are never used for other things they are classed as tractors for tax and insurance purposes, and the 15 miles from home rule is not applicable of you are actually engaged in the husbandry of your own livestock. Our biggest single cost is wages, by a mile, then bee feeding. 15lbs does not even come close to paying the bills. We need 28lbs for break even (that is heather only......we run on the basis we need that, and any blossom honey is a bonus. We regard blossom honey as a bonus, and to some extent a by product, as the bees going to OSR etc is part of the build up strategy for later season.)
Set fire to the books and throw them on the heather then, i gather new shoots on the heather is better than the twiggy out crops near my bees!
Over the years we have seen that to be rather a myth. Some of our very best locations are in places where they can never burn and the heather can be up to waist high and ancient. I also have a really good record in forest sites. Not dark planted conifers, but open relict stretches of the old caledonian pine woods. These are never burned over, but tyou have a wide range of microclimates in these places that means they can work more days than they can on open moors. But..then again,,we have some great open moor places too.
Actually its not that bad, just it seemed a little less colourful on the moors this year for some reason.
The heather was beautiful here, but too late, and got frosted too.
Do you use pulled comb? took me a while carefully selecting drawn comb which doesnt look like its added to the yeild at all. it should make a difference to yeild you would have though....
Some time ago I quoted results from some research we did back in the 1980s on this subject, comparing yields from various scenarios. Drawn comb deeps were best by far. Worst was sections or starter strips. Bees made more if run on deep boxes than if given shallow boxes, again by a significant margin. More surprising was that Manley spaced frames in supers, above normally spaced brood nests, hurt yield. Keep the same spacing and alignment all the way up and you do best.
looking at your pics also i notice a lot of boxes with no supers on (14/26)... im guessing some colonies must make 80lbs plus to make up for this?
That will very much depend on whatever picture you look at. We move everything except our Canada boxes to the heather, even young splits whose only job is to be ready for winter. If the load had a considerable number of young colonies for next year then yes, you will see single box hives htere. Other loads have none, and may even be mainly two queen units ready for reuniting (mother and daughter above a flight board). Although the young colonies come off the moors slightly smaller than their 'left on the lowlands' cousins, they winter better. I suspect its the fact the old bees that would not overwinter anyway have worked themselves out and left the scene, only leaving the winter bees, and that there are actually more of those. 80lbs, well yes, even this year the very best individuals have done that, especally at some of our very high sites. Some of our best places long term have virtually nil. Have pictures (not on the computer so cannot attach) of hives as high as 7 and 8 deeps. People inadvertantly exaggerate the amount recoverable from a box of honey a lot of the time, but we do get individual colonies pushing 200lb net yield, but that is rare. Our average though is calculated on dividing the total by EVERY colony worked and moved to the heather. Any method for exclusion of the duds and dinks and babies increases the yields people claim, but its a vanity exercise to inflate yield. Does not give you any more honey and is not a true reflection of work done. When someone tells you their yield, and its better than yours, first hing to ask yourself is do they count it the ame way you do? the answer is often no, so the comparison is irrelevant.
I think a book would be very interesting, at least the literature i can find doesnt give much information away and the internet doesn't seem to have much on the subject.
