Dakotas

[mnbeekeeper]

well i just drove across south dakota and in ten days i will be driving across north dakota. i am wondering what beeks are seeing and dealing with. it cant be good. i saw many bee hives. very few honey supers. lots of flooded land. crops way behind. but i did see quite a bit of yellow sweet clover and alfalfa blooming with bees near by. has it not been warm enough yet for them to get stacked up with supers. will there be a flow or a flop. anyone??? in MN the honey was just starting to poor in this past week and bass woods had not even started blooming yet. whats goin on out there things look good in our neck of da woods!!!

on vacation to the mountains with high hopes of full boxes when i get back!!!

[loggermike]

I guess everyone is too busy running hives out of the flood areas to get on the net. I hope not, but the pictures sure look bad.

[Bob Nelson]

Seeing same thing here with basswood. We do not have large natural stands like MN but there are quite a few in town. They normally bloom second week of June but just opened up a week or 10 days ago. They continue to be in heavy bloom now. So far as clover and vetch, there is way more bloom than looked like there was going to be earlier. Hope it's just getting started.

[LSPender]

every thing is late this year by 3 to 6 weeks, lots of honey boxes will be out in next 2 weeks.

[Mtn. Bee]

The Locust trees are blooming here now and the Camas just finished.
Lots of brush still blooming (ie. ninebark, snowberry,etc.)
Everything about 4 weeks behind in the Panhandle!
Drove through North Dakota about 4 weeks ago on Hwy. 2 and everything looked like one of the Great Lakes! SAD! Poor farmers and beeks!
Parts of the Hwy had been shut down earlier and I saw a railroad track being rebuilt as it was sinking into a Lake that used to be a planted field.
Saw a semi load of bees heading east today on I-90 when I was traveling home with 130 supers that I bought in MT and I was wondering if they were going to North Dakota?
Mtn. Bee

[Nick Noyes]

I think its going to be really good this year. If the weather stays nice and warm.

[The Honey Householder]

Just got back from a family reunion in ID last week. Came back across I-90. The sweetclover looked the best in WY, but SD didn't look bad either. Seen a lot of hive in SD, but they didn't have to many supers on them. No basswood here this year, all the leaves are turning brown and no bloom. Most the soybeans are 3-4 weeks late. Looking like the honey crop is going to be short and late this year here. April and May was all rain and now it's gone dry.

[Ben Franklin]

This has been a bad year so far all around.
Here in Ohio we are more then a month behind.

[benstung]

just checking in here from MN and things are looking good. basswoods are about to bloom i think it could be like back in '76.

[alpha6]

At least a month behind...seeing alot of caulk brood and EFB this year also...possibly from the wet and cold May we had. Flows are just starting with earnest...so that's a good thing.

[Tom G. Laury]

Honeyflows are late in California also.

[jim lyon]

Certainly a bit late this year, and usually late means bad. You don't get days back, the season marches on. Not a lot of bloom in our area but plenty of moisture and not many good honey flow days. My guess is that with a lot of warm weather South Dakota is going to be average at best. Hey Benstung (love that name) I'm probably one of the few people on here who was actually operating a bee outfit in Minnesota in 1976. Hot and dry (quite often not a bad thing up there) and one of the worst crops ever at least for me in the west central part of the state. I just dated myself though I think I was only ummmm around 8 at the time.

[gregstahlman]

honeyflow on schedule here. started re-supering today to get them stacked up, should be done friday. ask me in November how it turned out. too early to speculate. a lot can change from now till frost

[benstung]

jeez greg you can get through all your yards in 4 days ?

[gregstahlman]

not quite. had about 18,000 mediums left in the building, so we are gonna stack some our outfit tall and then start extracting the hives that we couldn't stack as tall so we can stay ahead of them. been supering 1300-1400 hives per day. that time of year again!!!!