Harvesting honey

The Dutiful Beekeeper

May 3, 2010 in Articles

Well June will soon be upon us and the dutiful beekeeper will be checking their hive(s) in a 7 day cycle. Why? Well the early summer honey should be due for removal before the first week in June.

Honey left where it is and the bees left to their own devices will result in (if the early summer bloom has been good) bees gradually taking back the honey ready to swarm. The bees will take the stored honey ready to feed the swarm for the three to five days it takes to relocate and get settled. If the honey is removed the bees do not have this option and you will gain a larger early harvest.

If the early bloom is not so good it simpy take longer for the above process to happen. They probably will still swarm but the honey extracted for the process will be over a longer period. Also the bees will be producing more brood to replace the innevitable swarm later in the Summer, which could result in Queen fatigue or congestion, plus the bees wont have much to do because of the lack of forage!!

Not sure if your bees are going to swarm? Well if they are short of space (lebensraum) they will swarm!! Is the brood box rammed full of bees (another delay tactic would be to add another super for brood)? Are there queens cells or even other queens? If yes a swarm is imminent.

One of the best solutions and certainly the easiest is to remove the early honey harvest (sealed honey) at the end of May and create a couple of “mini” swarms with the bees which would otherwise have not much to do. So give these new nuclei a couple of frames of eggs and open brood and remove to another locale. Feed all the hives well with 1 part sugar to 2 parts water syrup.

Now you have a queen right colony and perhaps two “mini” colonies with the right tools to re-queen start anew!! Awesome!

The other good thing about this whole process is the opportunity to treat Varroa and look out for EFB and AFB!!

Tags: Articles, Fould Brood, Harvesting honey, Honey, Swarming, Varroa 2 Comments »

Is it a good idea to harvest all the honey?

A recent conversation with my Mum has sparked this post and I think it raises and interesting point regarding the health of bees.

Obviously one of the benefits to keeping bees is the crop of honey provided but lets not forget why the bees make the honey in the first place….its certainly not for us to put in our tea? No, it is of course to help them survive the harsh winter months. But we can supplement their food/diet with sugar syrup and fondant I hear you cry! This I imagine is especially prevelant in more commercial apiaries but perhaps its a common practise with beginners through to experts. If so, should it be?

So we come to the crux of the issue. Is harvesting all the honey and the supplement of bees food detrimental to hive health; their immune systems in particular? The beneficial effects of honey have been well documented and we know it is a natural antiseptic. Surely honey as a complex solution that has evolved alongside the bee over tens of millions of years, cant be replaced with a simple sugar solution without having a detrimental effect on the bees.

Perhaps the lack of their natural food source is effecting their ability to combat disease and parasites? Could aggressive and greedy beekeeping techniques be contributing to the demise of the honey bee?