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My harvest was 22 pints from 2 hives this year. I have 10 hives total in my yard, 2 being Nucs. The only honey I was able to harvest this year was from my two newest hives which were from 3lb packages installed on 3/26. Why did my established hives not produce anything? Is there any action that I should take?
Thats a good question, a lot of unanswered questions before anyone can diagnose. Thats like saying hey doctor I feel bad and my wife feels good whats wrong with me.:)
Lots of factors here--how old are the queens in the existing hives, how are they positioned (aka, the drift factor if they are in a straight line), did everyone get fed the same earlier this year? Those would be my "shots in the dark" looking at an issue like that. I initially started with two hives from the same nuc source. The first couple years were fine, but one always outperformed the other. Neither hive was disappointing, the girls in one were just more motivated (or something). Eventually, the lesser performing hive decreased visibly in number. The queen was laying, everything looked good...but the yields were low and after I went out of town for about 2 weeks with work I came back to find one hive packed with honey and the other packed with wax moths. The hive had absconded to a tree about seventy feet above where the hive was. This tree limb later fell in a windstorm, and from amount of comb in the tree, they did pretty good up there. So your new bees may just be overly motivated.
Of the three new hives I added this year, two are performing incredibly well as far as filling out the bottom two boxes (and supers), while the other new hive is struggling to fill out the second box. They all got fed the same, similarly positioned, same source. I would look for the usual pests, rate of the queen laying, any difference in equipment (Screened bottom board etc). Start simple and maybe make small changes to see if they respond. Good luck.
Well don't know the elevation where you are at, but here that last freeze we had right after the apple trees bloomed, bit them and the tulip poplar trees, so nobody around here has harvested any spring honey. High hopes for the sourwood!