no honey in eastern va?

[Marcus Griffin]

I just came back from doing some work overseas, and my hives are just about empty! I've started feeding them and looking for a fall nectar flow, but wonder about the impact of this heat wave on flowering later. Anyway, is anyone else experiencing this problem. I'll ask at the next club meeting, but that's not for a week and a half.

[cphilip]

Not here. The Drought has, in fact, increased and extended our flow for some oddball reasons or another. We have had a flow of some sort for a long lingering time. Honey coming off at double normal and still going. Not certain its about to stop or not but it, in our general region (which is the western part of SC, NC and some of Georgia is mostly reporting so much honey that they cannot keep up with it.

So I don't know whats going on in your region. I think your probably wise to hear from other bee keepers in your area to find out whats going on.

[AstroBee]

Did you get your spring honey off? I got some spring honey this year, not great, but didn't get skunked either. All of my hives are now working cotton, which should produce a reasonably good surplus. The fall flow in Tidewater is usually not huge. I'm sure this varies with locality, but I've never counted on any surplus from the fall flow. Most years after the tulip poplar ends hives generally struggle through the summer heat, without any real surplus.

[JohnBeeMan]

Too dry, followed by too wet, follwed by too hot. :(

Not a good year - about 25% of last years harvest.

It is a good thing that I still have my day job. ;)

[Marcus Griffin]

AstroBee, I took what honey there was, 35 lbs only from three hives, in mid June before I went to the Philippines so that I could bring some to my parents. I'm in the Western Branch area and doubt there's any cotton around--so much suburbia.

Glad to hear others are doing okay to good. JohnBeeMan is quite right about keeping the day job...

[AstroBee]

35 lbs only from three hives...that's a real bummer - at least you got something! I recall that you had at least one booming hive (you posted some pics) early in the season, what do you think happened? Did you have some swarms, or was it just that bad over in Western Branch? The dry conditions in late winter and early spring had a significant effect on the flow around me. We'll hit it big next year; in the meantime let's all keep our day jobs!

[Marcus Griffin]

Yeah, that booming hive was split and then I had three swarms. So I have five hives now since I started the year with two and the girls had to make wax comb for those new hives so hopefully I'll be swimming in honey next year--if I can learn to reduce or eliminate swarming. I think I'll make a post about how to reintroduce a swarm.

And next year I won't be traveling half the summer like the past two years so maybe that will improve my chances of getting more honey.

If you're in the Tidewater Beekeepers Club, let me know so I can say hi at the next meeting.

And for the rest, hopefully everyone gets a decent fall flow.

[BjornBee]

Marcus,
I started feeding my nuc yards today. Its hard to tell with the full size hives as many have alot of honey and they are moving it around getting ready for winter. But the 5 frame nucs are an easy read on the flow conditions. I have nucs right now starving. They are a great indicator of the current flow conditions. And its dry right now.

[power napper]

Today I checked my hives hoping for some honey--none available--hope that the fall flow is productive here in western Pennsylvania.

[AstroBee]

Marcus,

Yeah, I'm a member of the TBA, but I'm leaving on a two-week vacation starting Monday, so I'll miss this month's meeting. In fact, I'm teaching a Monday night class at ODU this fall so I'll miss the entire fall at our club - bummer!

All this talk about honey storage got me curious, so I checked my hives today and was shocked that every honey super in my inventory was packed with cotton honey. Since I was out of supers, I just threw a couple of hive bodies on the biggest hives with 10 frames of bare foundation. With the intense heat lately I was expecting to see much less, but some times you get surprised. You're welcome to come out for a visit (~30 minutes from Chesapeake Square) and a free jar of cotton honey.