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Beekeeping Basics -- Summer Management Late Summer Honey Bee Management It is not unheard of for a package of bees put on new foundation to have surplus honey. A number of factors determine the amount of honey a hive of honey bees can gather.
Favorable Weather Favorable weather is important. People who have kept bees over a period of time can tell you that honey crops fluxuate from year to year. Bees do much better when the weather is warm and dry. Cold wet weather keeps the bees in the hive. They must be able to go out of the hive in order to gather a honey crop. Bees also need to eat and when the weather is cool and wet, the bees just maintain themselves (use what they gather with out storing much surplus). It takes one frame of honey and pollen to produce one frame of bees. How much honey and pollen a hive uses during the year to produce brood depends on the quality of the queen. A very productive queen will lay a lot of eggs. These eggs need feed. On the other hand, if the bees have ample nectar supplies and can fly on a daily basis, the large population of bees produced by the hive will also result in more honey being brought back to the hive. Honey Plants/Honey For the bees to produce surplus honey, they must have a nectar source. Bees are known to fly up to two miles or more to find nectar but if nectar sources are close to the hive, less time is spent flying to get the nectar and a honey bee can make more trips to forage for nectar in a day's time. Commercial beekeepers place hives in honey locations. A honey location can be identified as a place that has acres and acres of a plant that produces nectar in large quantities for the honey bee to gather. One example is the miles of Yellow Sweet Clover that exist in some areas of the U.S. Commercial beekeepers often tell of hives that gather an average of 200 pounds of honey or more per hive in an area like this. On the other hand, many beekeepers are limited to their back yards and the bees are limited to the area that extends two miles out from that yard. As a result, most hobbiest beekeepers have hives that gather 30 to 50 pounds of honey per season. If the area is a good area, the bees might bring in 100 pounds of surplus honey. Honey is sold to producers in bulk. Usually the prices for honey listed in the bee journals are for such sales. If the price of honey is .65 cents a pound then a hive that gathers 100 pounds would be producing a return of $65.00. If you spend $250.00 on equipment, bees, and protective clothing / tools, you are going to need to keep bees for a number of years before you see any return on your money. This is why it is so important for commercial beekeepers to have the right bee locations. Or you could bottle and sell your own honey for a price equal to or greater than the price charged by supermarkets. Your honey would offer the consumer a much better deal because your product is local -- has local pollen in the honey -- is not heated -- is not filtered to remove some of the more healthful particles such as pollen-- has a taste that most people can identify as honey from your region -- they will know you and come to depend upon your quality. Management of Hives Much of the planning that goes into producing a honey crop has to do with timing. Did you get your honey supers on the bees at the right time? Are your bees strong when the honey crop is to be gathered? Are you inspecting your hive for swarming? Do you have a productive queen? All of these things are the duties of a beekeeper that wants to get a honey crop. Feeding a New Hive of Bees Feeding a hive of bees especially one just started on new foundation helps the bees immensely. They need to build new comb, raise brood, and store food for those days they can not get out to gather nectar. However, there will come a point when the feeding should stop. I have been asked, "Why not let the bees convert the sugar syrup into honey? First, if you feed the bees and they do convert the sugar syrup into honey -- you will have adultered honey. The sugars that make up the honey will not be honey sugars. Second, these sugars from cane or sugar beets can be identified if they are put to scientific test. Third, it is illegal to sell adultered honey as pure honey. Why not just go out an mix corn syrup with honey? It is the same thing. It is a degraded product! When a nectar flow is on and you need to add additional supers, the feeding should stop. The bees will then store pure honey in the comb they build on the foundation you provide. Pure honey is a wholesome food and has an outstanding reputation. Don't mess it up. Quite frankly, most bee books don't even touch the subject of feeding bees too much. How and When do I get "Surplus" honey? A hive of bees stores honey for a reason. They put it away for later use during the winter season. Honey bees do not hibernate. They remain active even on cold days. It is estimated that a hive of honey bees will consume 60 to 90 pounds of honey during the winter. You will notice during warm days during the winter season that bees will leave the hive to take a flight. This is necessary because the bee holds it's waste until it can leave the hive to get rid of it. Honey bees do not generally deficate in their hive. You must leave enough honey for the bees to survive the winter season. As a beginner I would suggest that you error on the side of leaving more than not enough honey. A new hive should have at least a double brood chamber with one of the boxes completely full of honey and the lower one should have the outside frames filled with honey. When is it time to remove the honey? Honey can be removed from a hive almost anytime provided that the honey is fully capped over. Capped over means that at least 7/8 of the frame has been capped (that is the wax covering the bees put over the cell that holds the honey). If you try to take unripe honey (honey in cells not capped over), you will run into a serious problems with your honey spoiling because it has too much moisture in it. Discussion on this are found in Beekeeping 301. Most beekeepers remove honey just before Labor day or shortly after Labor day. It can be done later, but extracting (taking the honey out of the comb) is difficult when the temerature turns cold and honey is stiff and will not flow well. It is necessary in that case to warm the honey supers to 80 degrees or so before extracting. Even then the honey will not flow as well as if the temperature of the honey at extracting time is 90 degrees. The cardinal rule is: Always leave enough honey for the bees!! Take only what they can spare! |