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Tricks for getting the most honey from one hive

16K views 58 replies 19 participants last post by  The Honey Householder 
#1 ·
Say it's a contest - what things would you do to make one hive produce the most honey possible?

Supplement feeding early to start brood build up?
Transfer brood and bees into the hive before the flow starts?
Combine hives before the flow?
2 queen system?
Remove or cage the queen a month or so before the end of the flow?
Not use an excluder?
Extra entrance above the excluder?

You have to keep it from swarming of course, but that isn't the question. Assume you can prevent swarming.

Anybody do this?
 
#4 · (Edited)
So many forget about the health of the bees today. Not all bee supplier are suppling health bees anymore. With the prices of bees going up every year and a big demand for package. Package suppliers are getting bees in from whoever, and where ever they can, and bring problems with them. Starting to see things in the east that the west has been talking about for a while.:ws
Know your supplier and how they do business.

SICK BEES DON'T MAKE HONEY
 
#6 ·
Large frames and brood chambers.
Location, Location, Location.
This is close to 300lbs on this hive, and they drew out and fill that green box with ten 11 1/4" frames.

 
#7 ·
Build like mad by supplementing feed/pollen to build hefty numbers by start of flow.

Roll the queen when the flow starts.

Add boxes of drawn foundation to keep ahead of the bees.



Rolling the queen will allow all resources coming into the hive to be diverted to honey for about 3 weeks (one week until capped brood then additional 3 for the mated queen to start laying again)

You will stuff a hive FAST as long as you are in the right place. Downside to this is the population will dive a couple weeks after the queen starts laying again. (from what I noticed last year)

JMHO. I am a newbeek also.
 
#8 ·
If you were going to de-queen to increase honey production (by not having brood to feed for a period) when would you do it? I would guess that would be about 3 - 3 1/2 weeks before the end of the main flow if you were going to let them make an emergency queen.

On the other hand it's about 6 weeks from the time an egg is layed until the bee starts foraging so maybe it would be better to dequeen at the beginning of the main flow - assuming the population is very strong at that point. If it isn't the hive isn't going to produce maximum honey anyway.

So, what do the experts say?
 
#10 ·
I dont de-queen. IF you were looking to maximize honey, then rolling a queen at the beginning of the flow will allow the bees to focus on storing honey. They have no need to store pollen or turn it to food for larvae. At the beginning of flow also allows them to pick back up and bring in pollen for the newly laid eggs and brood.

I found this out personally by rolling my queen accidently during the blackberry flows this past year. Two almost identical hives and the queenless hive had 2 mediums more than the queenright colony.
 
#11 ·
So a new inexperienced beekeeper has once experienced maiming a queen and coincidentally getting a larger crop, and then proceeds to suggest it as a viable method to obtain larger crops on a regular basis. Hopefully all my competitors down here in the Bay Area will follow his sage advice.
 
#13 ·
SOME inexperienced beekeepers look for information to see why this might have been. Finding information supporting what I found, I then realized that it was possible and WHY this happened.

I have no idea why beekeeping is a cutthroat hobby? Seems everyone has a smart ass comment about the new guy not being 'up to par'

You do your thing, I'll do mine. FYVM
 
#39 ·
We start as beginners. Then we learn a little and think we know everything. Eventually with enough experience most of us become wise enough to listen too and evaluate all contributions that come our way.
 
#14 ·
Lots of supers with drawn out comb. Forget about the honey excluders, I learned this one the hard way and lost lots of honey crop over the years.
Lots of strong colonies with HEALTHY Bees.

Sounds like making a Nuc would be a reasonable thing to do!
I can think of one Beekeeper named Mel that would recommend the same thing, check out his website:
http://www.mdasplitter.com/
 
#18 ·
I can think of one Beekeeper named Mel that would recommend the same thing, check out his website:
http://www.mdasplitter.com/
That's an interesting site, but where I live there is only one good flow and it starts too early for that system to work on the same schedule. I would have to overwinter the nucs and combine them in April - Which would probably be just as good.
 
#15 ·
Clearly "rolling the queen" refers to an accident - it would be pretty hard to do on purpose.

As far as any of this being "sage advice" The first word in the thread is "Trick" some of them are good management practices which is great, but that's not all I was asking for - Otherwise I would have started the thread with something like "Best practices for producing a large honey crop?"

Just like "How do you grow a giant pumpkin?" Isn't the same as "What is the best way to grow pumpkins?"

Like any information found on an Internet forum - buyer beware.

But the tips that have been given are exactly what I had in mind.
 
#19 ·
Remember the old wooden/excluder screen drone traps with the wire mesh funnels/entrance? (I have a few floating in the archive pile)
They looked a lot like a front porch pollen trap and were used to get rid of those honey eating drones! :D
 
#21 ·
Start w/ a yard of bees. Take all of the supers of honey from all but one hive. Stack those supers on that last hive. Wait a period of time until the bees get up in those supers. Then harvest the crop. That's one trick.

Otherwise, Location, location, location and good strong hives.
 
#23 ·
For giggles I thought about making a colony queen-less and adding capped brood to it constantly from strong hives making a insane sized honey producing hive. I was thinking of a long box, say five deeps wide then stack honey suppers in center to the moon. You could constantly swap brood frames every week from one side or other. That should make some serious honey and relive swarming pressure from other colonies. I think it would be cool to just see the mass of bees coming and going and how large the colony would grow.
 
#24 ·
If you did this you would certainly need that long box so it would be easy to inspect brood a couple of days after or they would sure raise a queen from a stray larva. You would have to give them some open brood too or they would probably develop laying worker. Might be a good way to have a cell starter and honey hive too.

Hmm...
 
#25 ·
Hey HH, just think of all the honey you could make if you "took the leash off" your queen and let her perform at her peak !

I don't really blame you. If I had honey running out my ears I would have to restrict the brood nest to one deep and make them go thru a queen excluder too.
 
#27 ·
For every queen excluder that fails I lose about $100 in honey a year. Most call it feed for the bees, I call it lost profit.

I had a few hive produce 11-14 medium supers last year. Almost a barrel of honey for those hive in production. Location is a big part of it, but why does one hive produce 12 supers and the hive beside it only produce 4 supers. Dad say thats a good thing, because you stand on the short hive to take the honey off the tall one.:scratch: I think a lot going to the queens.

Maybe this is for another tread, but went does most enduce the queen excluder to the hive. And what kind of excluder are most using. Excluders are like most equipment it is great if used right. :thumbsup:
 
#26 ·
Unless I got my info wrong Im under the impression you will not develop laying workers unless you go bloodless. If wrong Id like to be corrected.

If on a weekly schedule you should in theory be able to scrape all viable queen cells before any hatch. If you put a queen excluder under supers, and on sides of the two brood chambers you could rid hive of a queen that pops up without to much hassle. I thought about being able to raise cells in these too. You could raise a ton of them.
 
#29 ·
[QUOTE= Location is a big part of it, but why does one hive produce 12 supers and the hive beside it only produce 4 supers.

I've had one hive make far more than others, too. Maybe the strong one is robbing from others or maybe because of hive setup foragers from other hives are returning to that strong one.
 
#31 ·
I will never accept that genetics can directly account for widely variable honey crops. My feeling is if you would go through a yard and count frames of brood several weeks before a major honey flow that you would see a fairly direct relationship between that frame count and your surplus honey being initially stored. If the honey flow were a bit later many of those smaller hives would begin to catch up of course. But the big variable is always the drifting factor particularly if your yard is set up to drive a truck in or near enough to affect a flight on a day when you might be supering with a large flight on. Bees can and do frequently get in the wrong hives when returning heavily laden particularly if something has changed since they left. The fact that is it is not at all unusual to have large numbers of bees begin to land on a truck load of supers or a corner hive that you have just supered up gives you some idea how easily this can happen.
We use wire excluders, have never really trusted the flimsy plastic ones. In addition to maximizing your honey available to pull off the other big advantage of excluders is keeping not just the brood but also the pollen in the brood nest and greatly minimizing hive beetle problems in the extracting room.
 
#40 ·
I will never accept that genetics can directly account for widely variable honey crops. My feeling is if you would go through a yard and count frames of brood several weeks before a major honey flow that you would see a fairly direct relationship between that frame count and your surplus honey being initially stored.
I agree that drifting can be a factor in some colonies making way more honey than others in the same yard. I gave a quick answer to the question, and probably should have said more.

Yes, in my apiaries, it is about how many frames of brood are present at the start of dandelion bloom, and how much brood they maintain through the flow season. Along with amount of honey produced, one criteria I follow is minimum of 9 frames of brood. Before I started raising my own, and bought all my queens, the strength and production in each apiary was all over the board. Tall hives, short hives and in between. Using the 9 comb rule changed all that, but the first indication of productive colonies is of course how many supers of honey they made. After years of raising my own stock, a new NY inspector came online. He commented by writing on the hives things like...another colony with 9 frames of brood, another colony with 9 combs of brood...wow, another breeder here, etc.

My reason for my too short reply was that I think rather than try to get super production from one colony by using some trick, it is better to increase the colony average in the whole apiary.

With that in mind, how would a beekeeper go about accomplishing that job other than through selection (genetics)? You say that the most productive colonies in the yard and the ones with the most brood are likely because of drift. What other indicators should be used by the beekeeper trying to increase the colony average in the apiary other than honey produced, and amount of brood maintained in the broodnest?
 
#33 ·
HH, I certainly understand why you would have to use an excluder if you are restricting the queen to one deep super. Most queens can fully cover a deep and a shallow, or two mediums. When I used commercial equipment I used three mediums. I rarely had trouble with the queen laying in surplus supers with no excluder.

Clearly, your location is far superior to mine.

I would be surprised if you don't have major swarming problems, crowding them that much.
 
#35 ·
Don't get me wrong I do lose a few to swarming, but I do shake a lot of packages to sell too. Its easier to cut queen cells out of single then doubles!!!!
I shake my packages in around the last week of March and start shaking the extras to sell around the first of May. Most the time I only have to shake a few frames out to keep things in line with my strong hives. The local beekeeper like it because they get fresh bees the same day. The packages I sell are back in the hive within less then 24 hours most of the time. Plus they don't have all that shipping they have to pay.
 
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