Over winter colony

[Repwoc]

Bees’ aims in life are two-fold - to reproduce and to survive. Those two traits/characteristics are not favoured by beekeepers.

I think survival is useful.

 

[Finman]

My hives live with sugar 9 months. Then bees gather honey two months and I robb all honey off.

That is bees' destiny here on 60 latitude.

 

[Earthboy]

Excellent comment but allow me to edit a bit:

Bees’ aims [All living beings' aim] in life are two-fold - to reproduce and to survive.

 

[Earthboy]

My hives live with sugar 9 months. Then bees gather honey two months and I robb all honey off.

That is bees' destiny here on 60 latitude.

Despite the obvious geographical distance, your flow sounds almost like mine; the fact that I live further south does not always guarantee I will have a longer or better flow at all. Ours last only two and a half months, a reason why we must feed. In fact, I dare say your flow could be far more intenser than mine as the plants up there must have evolved to take most of your *short* northern [beautiful] summer.

 

[Erichalfbee]

Do bees have an innate instinct to maximise their colony size before a flow? Do they actually know there will be one or are they simply opportunists?

Dani,

Bees’ aims in life are two-fold - to reproduce and to survive. Those two traits/characteristics are not favoured by beekeepers. Bees will happily over-winter on a single deep National (I personally prefer 14 x 12). Beekeepers want the bees to collect and store a large excess of stores - throughout the summer and not just in the autumn.

Bees are opportunists - they forage ‘excessively’ if it is there and they have sufficient numbers to process that window of opportunity. Beekeepers try to marry those two criteria - but often fail for the OSR (a man-made foraging crop) because there are too few foragers to collect/store the available crop over and above the needs of colo

My bees most certainly forage on ivy late in the year - how much of this goes for their winter stores, I know not - but considerable some seasons. Leaving the brood box honey (mostly) intact, and only harvesting any excess over, that seems to be fairly adequate for their winter survival.

RAB

Yes that was my point thanks.
opportunity

 

[Finman]

On this latitude all blooming is squeezed to a narrow gap. Good honey plants are not many.
Raspberry and fireweed are the best. They can give over 100 kg per hive, but if you have too much hives is at same place, yield might be 30 kg per hive.

 

[Erichalfbee]

On this latitude all blooming is squeezed to a narrow gap. Good honey plants are not many.
Raspberry and fireweed are the best. They can give over 100 kg per hive, but if you have too much hives is at same place, yield might be 30 kg per hive.

One if my best ever crops was from Fireweed. Across the valley the trees were harvested leaving a naked hillside which was soon purple with it. The weather was brilliant and I ran out of supers.

 

[Earthboy]

I was busy converting the Kg to Lb, and it looks like your yield is double of mine. In a good year, a single hive, everything being ideal, would produce 100 lb of surplus honey for me, that's one Langs deep of honey (that's about 23-25 2lb jars or five gallon), having filled their own winter store in two deeps. To overwinter, they need on average between 60 to 80 lb, depending on the weather. Our winter is rather mild with a rare exception like this year. I am leaving them way more for spring split.

Here yellow/white sweet clover honey is premium although mine works all sorts of flora throughout the flow: clovers, privet, persimmons, vitex, sumac, etc. Clovers [Dutch] can be a huge source in the north, but in the south, not so much. When they bloom, there are other, higher-value floral source-smorgasbord for them to choose. So they ignore. There are other types of clovers but their tongue is just too short to take advantage of. I do see them on clovers but not too many.

 

[Murox]

I was busy converting the Kg to Lb, and it looks like your yield is double of mine. In a good year, a single hive, everything being ideal, would produce 100 lb of surplus honey for me, that's one Langs deep of honey (that's about 23-25 2lb jars or five gallon), having filled their own winter store in two deeps. To overwinter, they need on average between 60 to 80 lb, depending on the weather. Our winter is rather mild with a rare exception like this year. I am leaving them way more for spring split.

Here yellow/white sweet clover honey is premium although mine works all sorts of flora throughout the flow: clovers, privet, persimmons, vitex, sumac, etc. Clovers [Dutch] can be a huge source in the north, but in the south, not so much. When they bloom, there are other, higher-value floral source-smorgasbord for them to choose. So they ignore. There are other types of clovers but their tongue is just too short to take advantage of. I do see them on clovers but not too many.

That's a significant amount to leave on for a mild winter (what do you call mild?)

 

[Earthboy]

That's a significant amount to leave on for a mild winter (what do you call mild?)

Sorry, I misled you to think I leave 200 lb of honey to over winter. I meant the bees and the honey are in two deeps, and there are some honey along the outer frames at the bottom deep but most in the second deep. Sometimes they eat up to the top; most times, not.

Here is the weather:

https://www.timeanddate.com/weather/usa/oklahoma-city/climate

 

[Earthboy]

That's a significant amount to leave on for a mild winter (what do you call mild?)

Your weather appears to be cooler, if not colder, and wetter than ours, which will guarantee a better flow than mine, far intenser.

 

[Murox]

Your weather appears to be cooler, if not colder, and wetter than ours, which will guarantee a better flow than mine, far intenser.

Potentially. However the west coast is open to the Atlantic ocean and is wet and WINDY, it does benefit from the gulf stream influence though, so where I am we rarely get a hard frost or snow; but the region is pretty much a green dessert (sheep and cattle) so areas of good natural forage are much coveted. (Finman is based around Helsinki, so he has yet another climate type to cope with)

 

[Earthboy]

Sorry to hear about the green desert. When I give beetalks, I tell my audience that the number one problem pollinators are now facing is the disappearing habitat: no more untouched idle land. I am in the ocean of Bermuda grass, a reason I have been planting hundreds of Vitex on my ten acre. It now appears that if you want to be a beek, you must plant something for the bees yourself, given ever-dwindling wild floral sources.

In America people spend millions of gallons of water, thousand gallons of insecticide, pesticide, herbicide, etc. on their lawns, let alone all the gas exhaust from weekly mowing. Yet the lawns produce not a single crop of food while pushing pollinators to near extinction. Hope the Scots know better.

 

[Murox]

Sorry to hear about the green desert. When I give beetalks, I tell my audience that the number one problem pollinators are now facing is the disappearing habitat: no more untouched idle land. I am in the ocean of Bermuda grass, a reason I have been planting hundreds of Vitex on my ten acre. It now appears that if you want to be a beek, you must plant something for the bees yourself, given ever-dwindling wild floral sources.

In America people spend millions of gallons of water, thousand gallons of insecticide, pesticide, herbicide, etc. on their lawns, let alone all the gas exhaust from weekly mowing. Yet the lawns produce not a single crop of food while pushing pollinators to near extinction. Hope the Scots know better.

Many do, but there lots of golf courses up here, i live a stones throw from one and there is another less than 3 miles away!!!

 

[Finman]

(what do you call mild?)

Imagine that Earthboy lives at Gibraltar latitude.

 

[Earthboy]

Latitude is deceiving, though. For instance, our weather is affected by the Gulf Stream a lot and the Canadian arctic, and not the Atlantic. Given the rotation of the earth, we get the weather from the Pacific. But I am happy to see you keeping bees in Finland. I hear lichen is disappearing, affected by global warming, reducing reindeer feed up north. Does your feed ever turn sour in the cold climate? How do you, if it does, balance the PH in the syrup to avoid it from going bad? (or does it turn into a moonshine)Here some use ACV or bleach drops.

 

[Repwoc]

syrup to avoid it from going bad? (or does it turn into a moonshine)Here some use ACV or bleach drops.

A little thymol stops syrup from fermenting or growing mould. Also seems to keep nosema in check.

 

[Earthboy]

Yes, but very pricey compared to bleach or ACV (a major attractant of SHB).

 

[Repwoc]

Yes, but very pricey compared to bleach or ACV (a major attractant of SHB).

What's ACV?

Only a tiny amount of thymol is needed. So the cost is negligible.

 

[Earthboy]

Most housholds around here would have these items at home: Apple Cider Vinegar and bleach (under the sink). Check the price of Thymol; depending on the size of the bottle, it seems pricey. Nosema is not, has never been, an issue thanks to mild winter. We get three-four days of cold invariably followed by three-four days of warm weather; bees fly out periodically in winter to relieve themselves.