Honey harvesting

[forestbee]

Can I harvest the honey frame by frame, I mean instead of taking the whole box, I just take the capped frames? Will be any advantage or disadvantage of doing it that way?
I can see doing this more labor intensive but on the other hand I will have more bees in the honey house (our basement) also the honey will be fully ripen and the bees will always has place to bring more nectar without adding more boxes.

Any thoughts ?

Moe,

[Michael Bush]

Sure you can. Just be sure to put empty frames in their place or the bees will cross comb everything.

But cleaning up after harvesting is a big part of the job and you will be doing that a lot with all the wasted honey that goes with it.

[forestbee]

Thanks MB for your replay,

My plan is to collect capped frames and once I have enough to extract I will extract them all in one time we have 20 frame extractor but not much hives for next year (about 20 hives) and I thought by doing it this way to eliminate bees in the honey house, also I heard that the bees will work harder bringing nectar if they felt they haven’t enough store, so will taking Honey from the hive more frequently will lead to more production?

Thanks and regards,

Moe,

[Michael Bush]

One theory is that taking the honey from them will make them work harder. I have not really noticed a difference.

My record harvests have been when I put on four supers at the begining of the honey season, added more when they filled those and had hives that were 7 or 8 feet tall. I leave them on because the bees protect them. If I pull off the honey *I* have to protect the combs from ants and wax moths and mice etc.

[beeman 202]

If you have 20 hives, and each fills 4 or more supers, thats 80 + supers, or more than 800 frames. You will have a constant mess and be working continually through the summer on something that should be done in three days in the fall.

Use "bee go" or some other means of removing the bees from the supers.

Remove the supers after the main honey flow (probably in early august where you are. Do it (the extracting) once a year. Make a big horrible mess, then when extracting is done, clean it all up and be ready for next year.

You will not have an increase in production by removing a frame here and there. The constant "messing" with the bees will probably cause enough disruption that your yield will actually fall, not increase.

The flow is heavy where your at, and you can expect to need a super a week or more when the flow is strong. This would make it almost impossible to be pulling frames here and there.

If your bees are healthy and your hives strong with good queens, your best yield will be achieved by tossing 4, 5, 6 supers onto the top of your brood chambers May 20th, and leaving the bees to do their work until mid august.

[Louise]

I dug up this old thread because I am debating the harvest some now vs harvest all at once. It seems to me that a pro for harvesting now would be being able to give drawn comb back to the bees to be able to fill. I can also see the negatives (mess, time, disruption, etc.)

My question is this: do the bees need the extra space? Michael if you have 4, 5, 6 boxes on top that is housing a lot of bees. Would you be compromising your population if you just had 2 on and were continually harvesting them?

[odfrank]

Bee careful about qouting dates on which to throw on supers. January 20th is about right here, and by May 20th most of the flow will have been missed.

[Michael Bush]

>My question is this: do the bees need the extra space?

Yes they do.

>Michael if you have 4, 5, 6 boxes on top that is housing a lot of bees.

Not only that, but they spread out the nectar to dry it and the more surface area the more they can dry it.

>Would you be compromising your population if you just had 2 on and were continually harvesting them?

Probably. But the flow everywhere is different. Some places have a large short flow and some have a small but long flow.

But still you could probably get by with less supers by harvesting as you go. But I think it's too much work.

>Bee careful about qouting dates on which to throw on supers. January 20th is about right here, and by May 20th most of the flow will have been missed.

I have the same problem giving advice here. Things differ by climate a lot. I wouldn't even OPEN one of my hives in January. http://www.beesource.com/ubb/smile.gif

I'm in what most people consider the North but still by May 20th I'll have hives swarming if I don't already have some supers on. In fact, on Sunday I just went through one that was about to swarm and one that obviously aldready did, so May 20th would be too late here too. And then in the South...