I'M ON FIRE!

[tedh]

Okay, so, maybe not on fire as in smoldering, smoking, and in need of medical help but, I am very excited and having positive thoughts about the future of my beekeeping.  I just spent a wonderful afternoon with Lazybkpr.  Thoroughly Enjoyed it!  Learned a little about bees in general AND found out that if I end up with more honey than I know what to do with there may be a solution!  I had nightmarish visions of every vessel we own being filled with honey, buckets, bowls, pots, pans, and lets empty that milk down the sink, she'll never know!  All said vessels would have honey dripping down the sides leaving sticky rings everywhere we sat them down and I can't even talk about that spill on the floor right now because I'm busy trying to find something else to put this @#!$&^ honey in!  I know!  The BATHTUB!
  Okay, so, maybe not that bad.  But really, ten maybe fifteen gallons we could probably consume or give away to family and friends.  But what if we ended up with say 600 pounds?  For the love of God! What would we do with it?  So Lazy mentioned something about bulk honey buyers.  Phew! Dodged a bullet on that one!  He also mentioned that when people find out we have unprocessed local honey for sale we won't be able to keep it around.  Maybe.  Maybe not, but bulk honey buyers?  Yeah Baby!
   I've also been concerned about "how do you stop from growing your apiary?".  I mean really, Josh and I want three, okay maybe four hives each.  Okay, maybe five each.  But we see a limit.  That's the point.  So if you have to split to avoid swarming what do you do with the split?  I know!  Make another hive!  But what about the limit?  Me?  I'm going to try to pawn them off on Lazy!
  My dear, sweet, wife came home and I regaled her with all I learned.  Her reply was "I was wondering about all the honey, and how you were going to rein in the number of bees!"  Is she somehow probing my mind?  It must be a dear, sweet, wife thing.  Or is it something more sinister?  Hmmmm.  Maybe she's aware of my motto,"Anything less than too much is just not enough!".  Just one of the reasons I quit drinking alcohol!  Anyway, I've had a GREAT day!  Ted

[iddee]

Somebody get the thermometer and the aspirin. He has gotten the fever, for sure.     

[Jen]

No doo doo Sherlock 

[LazyBkpr]

Always enjoy it when Ted comes down.
   A good year? I have seen 120 lbs of honey from a GOOD hive in a GOOD year. Average is probably closer to 60..   5 hives, Averaged, some producing more some less.. 60 lbs averaged each is 300 lbs..  If between you and Josh you manage to get 10 hives to average at 60 lbs you'll have 600 lbs of honey..  Last time I checked bulk honey was around $2.00, Not sure what the current price is..  But, thats $1200.00 If China etc doesnt flood us with more funny honey. Or hasnt already...  Maybe someone else that sells in bulk can update..

   Had a good day too, went through the nucs to make sure the queens we made are out and about.. One of them was queenless. Checked on some hives that had cells built, and will use one of those for a queen in the nuc..
   Gonna have Ted give us a hand extracting, and the next thing will be getting him down to help with a cut out!!   

[minz]

When did Ted get a direct read out of my brain! Word for word for the last how many years now I do the same exercise.  I go out into the shop and build 10 shallows for all the cut comb. 8 mediums to keep down the overflow, Queen castles to breed out the queen cells. I buy 1400 board foot of lumber to make equipment.  If its worth doing its worth overdoing. 
Well it is mid July, reality time:
 I hate to say that I have about 3 hives that have put honey on out of 6 that I brought through winter. I have about 15 laying queens, half of which were splits that need feeding. I had one hive with 4 supers on it that the bees have all drawn out and they are so clean right now they can go right back in the shed (blackberry ended and they were booming). What the heck happened to that dream of overflowing honey? The honey they have left they will not cap. I am now concerned that I will not get enough light honey to enter in the State Fair by August 7th.  The people in Boring have sold their place and I need to find a new place. The Corbet yard was way too much 4x4 truck work and schedule to work out, the Estacada bees are stinging the owners in their gardens, I just did a mite sugar roll and the lowest number I came up with was 10! I just built more deeps to put my splits in. 
Help me because I am right now the exact opposite of where Ted was (other than not currently back to drinking).

[LazyBkpr]

Dang Minz, rough year for you..
   Last year was that way here...    One step at a time, putting one foot in front of the other is how we get through years like that.   I dont have much honey to extract this year because I split so hard trying to expand, so will have little to show for the effort until next year.. provided of course, I don't lose all my hives this winter.

[Jen]

Scott! You're not going to loose all your hives this winter, those bees love you too much 

   I'm having 'One of those years' as well.. as far as booming hives anyway, they're perking along slowly. On the other hand the swarming episode gave me 3 more hives that I wasn't counting on, now I have 4, so that's a plus. I wasn't sure it was a plus at first, but I'm doing just fine with 4.

[minz]

Rough year? The way most of my luck goes that was me bragging!
It actually was a rough year all the way around for me and the bees just paid for it. Probably why my humor has been a little dryer than usual, trying to laugh at myself (so I do not miss the best joke in town).