Summer harvest?

[Amari]

Bloody long hairy plants sticking of the flowers it’s not the best to be worked .
Give me borage any day
Plan is for a few acres of borage next year flowering in July .

I grow phacelia to cover bare land after a crop is harvested on our allotment. Some honey bees and bumbles visit but the blooms are covered in hundreds, maybe thousands, of hoverflies. It's the best plant for attracting pollinators IMO.

 

[Amari]

Oops, the report above was true for several weeks (Phacelia is long-flowering) but today there were a few honeybees, plentiful bumbles (many more than previous) and no hoverflies!

 

[gregior]

Can't make up my mind about calling it a day and removing the supers. Balsam is in flower now and bees working it,but had a look in the supers and there's nothing being added, they're the same weigh if not a touch lighter than they were in late June.
Colonies are very strong and whenever the weather allows are working really hard,varroa levels don't seem too bad so no panic about treating just yet. Weather looks cool and unsettled for the next 2 weeks at least. Think i'll give them 1 more week then remove the lot and hope they can collect enough for the winter.

 

[Nannysbees]

Managed to take off 13 frames today, a lot more left on uncapped and over 23% water content. Not sure if they will be able to cap it all in time. Could be the end of the summer harvest!!!!

 

[Moobee]

This weekend. The flow here stopped almost a month ago (*about the same time i hastily ordered more supers and frames for fear i was going to run out!), I'm hoping they will have capped what they had and it'll be ready to extract

*Sod's law - the same rule which has meant it's rained every day since my new sun shelter cover arrived

Oh so it’s your fault!!

 

[Moobee]

I’m undecided. Weather on the coast here affects our season to the extent that we always seem a few weeks behind what’s happening inland. Bramble was still flowering a few days ago and supers were filling. Despite patchy weather with drizzle and some blustery showers, the bees have been out and very busy. This morning the home hives were whizzing out like gangbusters despite the rain so they’ve either found a great source of nectar somewhere or they’re robbing….

 

[StephenT]

Booked the club honey room for 11 August. Upside is a purpose built room with a big electric spinner. Downside is having to cart the supers back and forth. Hasn’t been much forage around for a few weeks now but fortunately the weather has been dry enough for the bees to make the most of it. Got 18 supers on 4 hives but reckon there will be the equivalent of about 14 to extract.

 

[Eyeman]

Brood boxes nice and heavy so no risk of starvation. Most have multiple supers as heather in bloom so moving capped frames into a single super before clearing.

 

[emoclewbee]

Harvested 72.5kg of Summer honey this weekend. From 4 hives. One a swarm this May and the other a spilt taken this spring. A little disappointing when compared to the spring crop but I am satisfied with it considering the weather here in the SW of Ireland the past month.

 

[Susan1]

What will you do if it's still sitting there in spring?

I should be so lucky as the song says. I have a husband who loves the stuff and I do enjoy it but I really meant its now my main interest for keeping bees. I love everything about them not just that they produce lovely honey.
At the moment I have two nucs and three hives. The hives have stored so little honey in the supers that there won't be enough to harvest. I am going to start feeding today as I am worried that they are not getting the chance to bring in much. The weather has been horrendous and this really has effected the forage even if they do manage to get out on the rare dry day.

 

[enrico]

I should be so lucky as the song says. I have a husband who loves the stuff and I do enjoy it but I really meant its now my main interest for keeping bees. I love everything about them not just that they produce lovely honey.
At the moment I have two nucs and three hives. The hives have stored so little honey in the supers that there won't be enough to harvest. I am going to start feeding today as I am worried that they are not getting the chance to bring in much. The weather has been horrendous and this really has effected the forage even if they do manage to get out on the rare dry day.

Can you put your location on your avatar, thanks . It helps as we come from different areas and even countries.

 

[Susan1]

Co Antrim N Ireland. Have to sort out my membership as joined year ago but now that I got the app on my phone its wrong.

 

[Swarm]

Would this be you Susan? I did wonder at the time.
https://beekeepingforum.co.uk/threads/online-shopping.55732/#post-877264

 

[Susan1]

Yep.

 

[Jules59]

Ive finally given up waiting for better weather and extracted what I could.
17.5% water.
Summer honey harvest 30% down on last year. Left them each with a partially filled "winter" super to fill over the remaining weeks whilst I start varroa treatment .

 

[Nannysbees]

Ive finally given up waiting for better weather and extracted what I could.
17.5% water.
Summer honey harvest 30% down on last year. Left them each with a partially filled "winter" super to fill over the remaining weeks whilst I start varroa treatment .

Miserable weather for August!!!!

 

[alancooper]

Not a hope of a summer harvest here. It’s been raining flat out for the last 4 weeks. All the bramble and clover missed this year. I actually had to feed a small hive 2 weeks ago as it was empty of stores. They took down 3.5 litres every day for a week! Went over to help another guy local to me yesterday and a split he made about 6 weeks ago had completely starved! Not much stores on his other hives either. If it wasn’t for the strong spring crop this year, I think we would have been feeding all our hives this summer. Given the lack of forage, I might have to leave any heather crop they can scrounge on the hives to get them through winter.

Similar here in Fermanagh Lakeland. Extremely good Spring harvest early June, then weeks of rain from late June. Supers all light today and little in the brood boxes. I will be taking full frames from supers this week, then feeding and treating for varroa. Hopefully Ivy will be early and there many be a crop.

 

[Martimart]

I’m thinking I might leave it until the first weekend in September, which will potentially still give me time to put the apivar strips in.

I’m more concerned about some settled weather to lift the onions, they’ve been ready for 2 weeks and need to come out, but also need to dry off a bit before I store them.

 

[enrico]

I think you all need to move to Somerset. It's lovely here

 

[The Poot]

I think you all need to move to Somerset. It's lovely here

I wouldn’t shout about it as they might!
I agree that Somerset is a lovely county, but there are some dodgy areas…..