Author Topic: honey production (Read 13904 times)

Zookeep · « **on:** January 04, 2014, 05:33:22 pm »

I met with a honey producer today and we had a chat, he uses a single deep for brood chambers and just adds supers above for honey, I dont know how he can not have hives swarming all over the place with so little brood space any ideas?

LazyBkpr · « **Reply #1 on:** January 04, 2014, 05:45:28 pm »

New queens usually. He may also be moving frames of brood out to keep them from overpopulating. Got a meeting coming up. Phil Ebert will be there, I'll ask him how they do their honey production hives.

riverbee · « **Reply #2 on:** January 04, 2014, 08:54:29 pm »

zoo, honey supers? or comb production?

Zookeep · « **Reply #3 on:** January 05, 2014, 06:22:04 am »

honey, thats whats got me baffled, I just dont see how 1 brood box can produce alot of honey.

tecumseh · « **Reply #4 on:** January 05, 2014, 07:09:51 am »

if you do the math using several assumptions on the maximum daily laying capacity of a queen then this would not be such a mystery to ya' at all. then remind yourself that this is THE MAXIMUM laying capacity... not the average or the mean and then I suspect it will all fall into place for you.

I regularly use queen excluders and no bottom entry repeating essentially Jerry Hayes method in 'Is a Queen Excluder a Honey Excluder' and in about 95% of the cases one deep box with 9 frames is all you need. You do need to make certain when you set the box up that you do not have any restriction to brood.... for example solid frames of pollen.

blueblood · « **Reply #5 on:** January 07, 2014, 01:17:24 pm »

Tec, did you have a link for Haye's article about that?

riverbee · « **Reply #6 on:** January 07, 2014, 04:28:59 pm »

blue,

Queen Excluder or Honey Excluder

ps if you go there.....better come back here or we send a posse after you!

Perry · « **Reply #7 on:** January 07, 2014, 07:25:42 pm »

tecumseh · « **Reply #8 on:** January 07, 2014, 09:06:07 pm »

dang ya' tricked me there riverbee. kind of like Gandalf foolin' the Hobbits to wander into Mordor to seek out the owner of a ring???

blueblood · « **Reply #9 on:** January 07, 2014, 10:45:54 pm »

ps if you go there.....better come back here or we send a posse after you!

[/quote]

Thanks, I have bookmarked it! Just like the cookie man said, run, run fast as you can, you can't catch me, I'm the gingerbread man!

riverbee · « **Reply #10 on:** January 07, 2014, 11:40:06 pm »

well, the only place to find that article online is over there, it's a good article, and i really didn't want to go digging through my files to find the original abj article.....scary stuff, my files.....

and i don't have permission to reprint it here anyway, otherwise i would have.

tec, you started it, you mentioned the hayes article......i knew where to find it online......

and blue......bookmark? just print it off!!!!

tecumseh · « **Reply #11 on:** January 08, 2014, 06:29:02 am »

well thanks for that riverbee

. much like yourself I could have found the article if someone had twisted my arm and then gone thru my 6 foot stack of old ABJ. this of course suggest I don't have the very best filling system or that I don't ever throw anything away either.

for those folks into their second or third year then Mr Hayes article is something they really should try. prior to this time I pretty much figure that a queen excluder is totally unnecessary anyway.

minz · « **Reply #12 on:** January 08, 2014, 04:01:06 pm »

I was back in Wisconsin last year and met up with a commercial Beek from ‘the other forum’ linked. They run all deeps (including supers) and a single brood box below an excluder. Every couple of weeks they go and put most of the capped brood above the excluder and feed more open foundation to the brood box with the queen. They also clip and mark their queens. Got me thinking about clipping my queens this year (one of my goals). I am going to try this (double deep though not all deeps ).

apisbees · « **Reply #13 on:** January 13, 2014, 11:13:00 pm »

Being commercial and if his is spiting and selling nucs and packages these activity's are his swarm control and the timing to the honey flow doesn't allow time for the bees to build back up to 2 brood boxes in time for the honey flow. Once the main honey flow hits the bees swarming instinct is suppressed as long as they have empty space to store and ripen the nectar.

Crofter · « **Reply #14 on:** January 14, 2014, 10:39:23 am »

If they are constantly pulling brood up into the box above the excluder the bees should not be inclined to put honey down below that brood. That may keep the bottom box more accessible to to queen for laying. I think we covered that one deep is enough space to handle a queens laying potential if it is not filled up with nectar and pollen and especially if capped brood is removed.

Doesnt this scenario seem somewhat like what is accomplished by Demarreeing? This interests me for next season since I do not want to expand hive numbers but want honey without swarms (hopefully)

Jen · « **Reply #15 on:** January 14, 2014, 12:23:47 pm »

Minz, what is 'clipping a queen' mean?

Riverrat · « **Reply #16 on:** January 14, 2014, 12:33:36 pm »

Beekeepers will clip the wings on a queen so she cannot fly. I never have done it. It was at one time a theory for swarming control. Usually what will happen is she will try to take off with the swarm and end up on the ground in front of the hive. Then once a new queen emerges the new virgin queen will leave with the swarm

apisbees · « **Reply #17 on:** January 14, 2014, 01:30:46 pm »

Jen in MinniMo explanation of to stop swarms from leaving the hive the queen will leave the hive with a swarm a couple of days before the queen cells emerge if the bees stop her from taring the cells down. the theory was that when the swarm left and the queen could not fly that the bees would return back to the hive thus stopping the hive from swarming. the Problem is the bees still want to swarm and because there are multiple cells in the hive the bees will protect some of the remaining queen cells after the first queen emerges and so the bees will swarm with a virgin queen. You can have multiple swarms issued from the same hive. The first swarm with the old mated queen is called the prime swarm, secondary swarms with virgin queens are called cast swarms.

Jen · « **Reply #18 on:** January 14, 2014, 10:27:03 pm »

This one is complicated for me, seems there is more than one issue going on here.

Minz! Don't take this personal.. okay! cause I'm not fully understood of this issue yet, just going on nature's instinct!

I think swarming is a natural process! If the bees have already gotten it in their heads that they are going to swarm... then that's exactly what they are going to do! If you catch the swarm - Hallelujah! if not, then they will set up housekeeping somewhere else.

Clipping a queens wings seems so unnatural and cruel!

iddee · « **Reply #19 on:** January 14, 2014, 10:32:30 pm »

Let's confuse you a bit more.

If you don't want them to swarm, take 2 or 3 frames of brood and the queen and put them in another box. Shake the bees from another couple frames. Move them away. The queen and many bees are gone, so they think they have swarmed. They will go back to normal life, and you will have the "artificial swarm" safely secured in a new hive.