maxim honey yield

[tony350i]

Could some of you explain how you would go about getting the maxim honey yield from one hive?
My first honey flow is oil seed rape and then there is a brake of 2 to 3 weeks and the field bean

Thanks

Tony

[Jim Fischer]

> how you would go about getting the maxim honey yield

The bulk of this has nothing to do with the beekeeper
doing anything more than predictable and prudent
things, and being prepared to take advantage and
fully exploit good weather. Many beekeepers want
to take credit for their good harvests, but fail
to realize that this way of thinking implies that
they must also take the blame for the poor ones.

In fact, you can only prepare and plan to be
able to exploit good conditions when they happen
to happen. You can't make a bad season into a
good one by mere force of will, but you certainly
can and will let opportunity slip through your
fingers if you don't look at your beehives as
Formula One racing cars, and "the flow" as race
day.

The "simple things" to do are to:

a) Build up the colony as much as possible
before the flow, using every possible trick
in the book, from feeders to pollen patties
to expanding the brood nest area. (This is
an investment, and one is "betting" than the
season's payoff will be worth the investment.
In fact, it always "pays off", even in a lousy
year, as strong colonies can always make the
best of even a lousy opportunity.)

b) Just before the flow, stack your drawn comb
as high as you can reach, and then go get
a ladder and stack some more atop that.
No hive ever suffered from having too much
drawn comb, and you will never know what
your location, weather, and bees can do until
you give a hive or three an "infinite" amount
of drawn comb to utilize in processing nectar
into honey. Go buy drawn comb if you have to.
Life is too short to waste several seasons
simply drawing comb.

c) Just before the flow, cage the queen. You
don't need all those house bees raising brood
when there is nectar to be processed, and if
you have done a good job at (a), you have a
strong enough colony to handle the nectar.
(Yes, you need to think about the longer term,
but if it takes 21 days from egg to bee, and
21 more days from emerged bee to forager, and
a typical bee lives a total of 45-60 days
during the spring/summer, this is not hard to
work out.)

d) For a secondary flow so close to the first,
you are mostly "coasting", utilizing the bees
you raised in (a). Don't sacrifice nectar from
your first flow in hopes of raising bees for a
second, speculative flow, take what you can get
when you can get it. You'll have plenty of time
to build up the colony and provision for
overwintering after the main flows are done.
(Heck, this would be a great time to do splits!)

e) Harvest early, harvest often. A capped super
full of honey is a de-motivator for bees if you
want them to work harder. No one really knows
if empty drawn comb generates a specific pheromone,
but hives with more empty drawn comb clearly do
go out and collect more nectar than hives with
less. A capped super is not "empty drawn comb".
This means harvesting, extracting and
returning supers to the hives as quickly as
possible, so plan on some sleep deprivation.
No one ever said beekeeping was easy.

These practices and approaches are both not
understood by the bulk of beekeepers, who mumble
amongst themselves about "when to add a second
super", nor are they accepted by most, who shrilly
insist that fairy tales about how "the bees know
what's best" are true.

While there is nothing wrong with managing one's
bees exactly as one wishes, wanting to optimize
one's tactics to create a "maxim honey yield"
means that one must set aside delusional fantasy,
wishful thinking, and anthropomorphism, and realize
that bees are simply insects with some highly
predictable behaviors that you can exploit to
your own ends.

In fact, the goals of bees and the goals of
beekeepers are very different. Bees want to
build up the colony to swarm and reproduce,
while beekeepers want to build up the colony
far earlier, so the colony can pollinate or
gather havestable nectar. Bees only want to
gather enough for overwintering, while beekeepers
want to trick the bees into gather much more.

Some seasons end up being a "waste of effort".
There is little you can do about this, but being
ready and able to exploit the good seasons is what
beekeeping is all about. "Management" is the art
of being proactive enough to be prepared to
exploit good seasons, and reactive enough to
quickly deploy resources appropriate to the
conditions.

[tony350i]

thanks jim for your reply,

i have read your reply twice and i am still trying to take it all in but i will try my best to do what you have said,
when caging the queen do i use a cage that press into the comb or one the hangs between the frames and how long shoud i leave it in the cage for.

thanks

tony

[George Fergusson]

>>wanting to optimize one's tactics to create a "maxim honey yield" means that one must set aside delusional fantasy, wishful thinking, and anthropomorphism, and realize that bees are simply insects with some highly predictable behaviors that you can exploit to your own ends.

Gee Jim, I can see giving up wishful thinking and even anthropomorphism, but delusional fantasy too? I mean, is NOTHING sacred?

>>i have read your reply twice and i am still trying to take it all in

Tony, I've been scratching my head over this very issue for a while now... it *does* make sense, eventually. It's Higher Beekeeping and takes a while to sink in. Most of us are still struggling to learn the basics, not the art of squeezing every last drop of nectar out of a flow. Understanding it requires a different perspective on the role of the beekeeper. Jim's description is really quite good, except for the setting aside delusional fantasy part. That's just going too far smile.gif

George-

[BjornBee]

He said "maxim honey yield". Anyone want to cover the part about killing the bees and harvesting all the honey. That would be "maxim".

[MichaelW]

I would like to see Jim's above post included in a book called "The Best of Beesource" it could be a how-to book about beekeeping, covering many aspects of it using only the best posts from this board.
Covering a variety of points of view.
Published in free PDF format.
smile.gif

[Chef Isaac]

I think one of the keys to a succesful harvest is to read book and try things and find out what fits for you.

Jim: You make a good point about supering high but, it my understanding, that causes the small hive beetle to be more prone to infest. I read that osmewhere but I cant recall.

I think that splitting hives in the spring can be a good idea but you kinda have to pick between harvesting a good amount of honey from that hive or wanting to make splits. Most of the time, you need to feed splits in the spring to increase population.

I have read and I am going to try Mr. Wrights method which pretty much fits Jims advice in point number 1.

[guatebee]

Just curious: when a specific management technique is mentioned, like making splits or trying SBBs all winter, why do I get the impression that folks tend to think all colonies should be treated the same, and therefore risk it all?
If i were doing increase, I would take one or two hives and forget about them yielding any surplus; I would split them into three nucs as soon as flow and weather conditions allow, and then split the nucs. I bet one colony could be turned into 5 colonies in one season, or more, and still harvest full yield from the rest.

Same situation has been the case when I suggest trying SBBs. Beekeepers assume ALL brood from ALL colonies will chill, so they don´t try them.

Experimenting is so fun and rewarding, but no one has actually said the whole apiary should be thrown into uncertainty!!

[Jim Fischer]

> Anyone want to cover the part about killing the
> bees and harvesting all the honey. That would be
> "maxim".

Not the following year. smile.gif
Killing bees is bad business, even up in the
far North of Alberta Canada, where until the
1980s, they thought they had no other option.

Packages suck, and you won't get your packages
in time to build them up to really exploit the
high-value early nectar flows.

Anyway, you CAN take "all the honey", or at least
all the honey in the supers, and feed the bees
starting in August or so to allow them to build
up overwintering stores. This happens more often
when honey prices are high.

> why do I get the impression that folks tend to
> think all colonies should be treated the same?

I dunno... maybe because no one wants to mention
that there are always a few colonies that are
not up to snuff, and therefore, cannot be
managed in the same manner as the bulk of the
colonies. I keep an "intensive care" yard
right next to the barn - it is where the weak,
the confusing symptoms, and the new splits live.
They certainly don't stay in my production yards,
as there is not time to mess around with odball
colonies when you have an entire yard to work.