Haven't extracted yet, want to know have sufficient store

[barry42001]

I believe I will have a harvest this year but for the moment nectar flow has tapered off while waiting for goldenrod to start. Has just started to more generally bloom don't know how long it takes to start producing nectar.  Spanish needle in full bloom for what that's worth. Once I am certain they have sufficient stores, I will harvest, not before ( while bees can survive on sugar syrup, no doubt any honey beats all artificial feeds. ) :P

[Lburou]

barry, you ask a good question.  The answer will be highly dependant on your location....   

[riverbee]

barry, sorry, what do you currently have on? deeps and supers, what shape are your deeps in? if supers on, how many, and how full are they? have your queens started cutting back on laying? (know you said you had some russkies).  like lee said, so hard for me to answer way up here north of you. 

hope you get a little harvest for all your hard work!

[barry42001]

I live in north central Florida, Gainesville to be exact. Have 2 deep Brood chambers, 2 deep super, one super each fully drawn and capped, other 3 - 5 drawn frames mostly capped. Upper brood chambers are nicely back filling.  Want to see the upper brood chamber totally capped honey or mostly. Had hoped to have all supers drawn but that shouldn't be much of a issue this spring.
And last week was seeing mostly full brood patterns...monster orientation flights.

[Riverrat]

Bees this time of year will pull honey down out of the supers into the brood nest

[Lburou]

barry, In a much colder winter here, we can go into winter with  just five frames of honey in a single deep, and be okay if its not too cold for long.  What you describe sounds like plenty of stores for your winter.  Its the spring time that they start to go through the reserves.  We do have occasional, small honey flows over winter, you will too.   HTH 

[pistolpete]

I'd suggest you extract all capped frames immediately.   Even extract the capped frames on either side of the brood nest (if you can find some with little or no pollen) and replace them with uncapped frames from above.  Certainly a local mentor would know better, but my understanding is that in northern Florida bees can winter on about 40 lbs of honey (8 full frames).   A strong colony should be able to make that up between now and the end of October.  You don't want the stinky golden rod honey to get mixed up in your summer crop. 

[barry42001]

Thanks all, looks like I need to extract, never thought they would move honey down from supers, thought would back fill brood chamber with fresh nectar.

[Bamabww]

You don't want the stinky golden rod honey to get mixed up in your summer crop.

I agree. I try to pull my honey supers off before the golden rod starts to bloom and then let them finish their stores from it before frost, usually late October for us.

[barry42001]

Lol my lady likes the strong flavor of goldenrod honey, smell not so much.

[Jen]

Sooo, the flower doesn't smell good.. and neither does the hoeny?

[barry42001]

Is a very dark almost black honey not unlike buckwheat honey in color, both have strong flavors, with goldenrod having a bit of acidic bite that buckwheat honey doesn't. As for the smell, comparison ends, with goldenrod having a unpleasant ( old sweaty gym socks ) smell.
Never smelled the goldenrod flower itself, so can't vouch for the smell.

[Jen]

Our very dark honey is Oak, like molasses and strong in taste, but doesn't smell bad, pungeunt maybe