No Honey

[Jen]

Scott "Jen, as short as your flow season seems to be.. waiting to make nucs until after the flow might be best..   Your winters are not LONG AND HARSH, so making nucs later, and overwintering them, then selling them the following spring as overwintered nucs might be the best way for you to go if you want to harvest the most honey."

   You may have something there Scott, I knew from the teachings of Apis, that I wasn't going to get much a honey crop this year. I'm prepared for that, and in turn I've learned a lot about the 6 nucs that I made out of swarm queen cells. It was a long drawn out process this spring and summer to get the nucs queen established, lost a couple, just dwindled. However, I have found nucs to be a lot of fun and so easy to take care of once they are up and running.

    Also, this is the first year we had enough rain in the winter to really help with a flow. It was a short flow tho, maybe 2 weeks, and we are now back into drought conditions. So even our dependable Star Thistle obviously isn't offering much nectar.

If we ever recover from this dought for more than 2-3 years it will most likely be a whole other story honey wise.   

[LazyBkpr]

Dont forget, that nucs give you MORE excuses to get into the hives. They take more management, so your itchy fingers have something to do more often!

[riverbee]

"I did feed this spring, mainly because they were very weak going into the winter, and really didn't have all the comb drawn in the upper deeps.  We fed till there was a good flow on and removed the feed.   I did not feed when I added the honey supers which of course have no foundation.  The first two years they did a great job of building the comb and giving us some honey.  Maybe next year we will go with go with 50 % foundation and 50 % no foundation (for comb honey) and invest in a small extractor. "

thanks 40 acre. a couple comments, just the way i do it.  feed the bees until ALL comb is drawn, don't depend on or pull the feed when a good flow is on and foundation is not drawn.  also, i have placed honey supers of foundation on and have fed the bees to get them to draw out. this takes a little timing/checking.  when the foundation in the first super is drawn, pull the feed off.  don't rely on flows to get the foundation drawn whether it be in the brood box or honey supers.   

[Jen]

Scott "Dont forget, that nucs give you MORE excuses to get into the hives. They take more management, so your itchy fingers have something to do more often!"

Aaaah You know me so well  I had 7 nucs, perfect for weekly inspections, one at a time. Monday evening check Nuc 1. Tuesday evening check Nuc 2. It's so pleasant in the early evening, bees are calm. Takes about 15 minutes. I think this is one of my top coolest things on my bee list now.