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No honey in first year with 4 packages, and some drawn comb? REALLY??

13K views 51 replies 29 participants last post by  Roland 
#1 ·
I am confused about what I keep hearing about your first year, and not getting any honey. I have had hives before, but this year I am getting 4 hives which will have a few frames of drawn comb and the other frames have foundation. I am getting packages next week and hope to get some honey this year. Is that unrealistic?
 
#3 ·
I think the idea of not getting honey your first year is more along the lines of not expecting to get honey your first year. First year should be about increasing resources and keeping the bees alive. You can always hope for honey, just make sure you leave enough to keep the bees alive over the winter.
 
#5 ·
I am gomg into my second year with one hive in NJ. I didnt expect any honey last year but my hive did so well I actually pulled 21 lbs. of honey from it this past year. I was very happy with it. I am adding 2 hives this April and dont expect anything from them, but I can hope!
 
#9 ·
with already having drawn comb, there is no reason you shouldn't if you get them early enough. I put a package in on 4 drawn comb on may first last yr. and by Sept they had grown to a double deep brood box pluss I harvested 1.5 supers of capped honey, put one super back on wet and they overwintered as a double deep with a medium on top.
 
#10 ·
the fact is, do you want bees next spring, or do you want honey this fall? because in most places a package of bees simply can't cope with so much. now, if you were to get an overwintered nucleus hive, or larger, there is a larger possibility of surplus honey. In my first year (last year) we had a swarm move in, build out 2 deep 10 frame boxes, and keep going. Instead of supers of honey, I took frames of brood and gave them to smaller colonies so they could build up faster, and any frames that were removed, they quickly grew more out.

So, since you have 4 packages coming next week, just enjoy this year, taking bees slow, and get em working for next year.
 
#11 ·
Commercial guys get good honey crops from first year packages. It's about management.

Here is what I think is important to get your package productive first year. - If your flow is early you need the bees built up fast as possible. Drawn comb is not necessarily needed because if the bees are fed and kept motivated properly they will draw foundation real fast. Thing is, from the day the package is installed you want the bees working and reproducing at maximum. They cannot do that on an empty stomach, if there is little natural nectar or pollen available, give them sugar syrup and pollen substitute. Uncomfortable for some folks I know, but bees cannot make more bees out of nothing, so feed them. It's about that simple, get the bees pumping straight away, and your package will often go on to produce as much a crop as any overwintered hive.
 
#12 ·
Last year I started over and got 12 nucs. I had a head start with nucs compared to packages, but still being their first year, I built them up and harvested about 240 lbs. of honey. I had somewhat of a spring flow before I moved them and then a summer flow for 1 1/2 months.

My success in harvesting honey from first year hives was that anytime there was no flow going, I always had feed on them. 2 gallons of syrup at all times! I probably bought almost 2000lbs of cane sugar last year doing it. Make sure to have protein subs on at all times unless they're not taking it. Now I have 12 hives worth of drawn comb to start over with AGAIN, this year.

...I did not win the varroa battle. -_-
 
#13 ·
My answer differs from those who've answered before. It all depends on your local forage conditions - when and how much. And yes, management matters too. Where I live in Maine we never suggest that a first year package, on comb or foundation, will make surplus honey. My goal is for them to winter with honey of their own making from natural resources and the feed that I provide them with. They are frequently the colonies that need additional food beginning in February. Surplus to me is honey in supers and the bees have enough put way in the brood chamber for over-wintering and spring buildup. Occasionally a first year package produces surplus and that is cause for celebration! ALL BEEKEEPING IS LOCAL. (Our hopes may be raised for a package on comb - but that is what they are - hopes.)
 
#15 ·
The last time I had packages (the girls bought them for me as Christmas gifts) was a few years back. I get most of my bees from feral swarms and cutouts.
I experimented with swarms vs. southern packages. Needless to say the swarms out performed the packges AND provided honey the first year. I have a youtube vid of the activity level with packages vs. swarms.
Packaged bees are lazy IMO.
 
#16 ·
A lot of people will pull so much resource from their hive that they have to feed back a huge amount of syrup to cover the supply needed to make it through the winter. I personally don't like to do this. Too much work and money spent on sugar. Plus it has been shown that bees fed on syrup will have twice as many nosema spores as those who are not assuming every thing else is equal... so I try to leave as much as they need to over winter.. Which normally means I let them have the fall harvest.
 
#19 ·
We rarely get any honey in the first year, but it does happen -- it requires a large enough source of nectar and a very active hive after our main honey flow.

I have no idea what the nectar supply over the year is like in Indonesia, you will have to ask someone with local experience or wait and see what happens.

I usually advise people to not EXPECT to get honey the first year, that way they won't leave their bees with insufficient stores for winter. However, in don't think there IS much of anything like winter in Indonesia unless you have a very dry season where nothing blooms. Certainly no snow or freezing weather, anyway.

If you do have an extended period of dry weather when nothing blooms, you will have to insure they have adequate stores to survive until it rains again and the nectar flow picks up.

Peter
 
#24 ·
The calorie "sinks" in the hive are royal jelly production to feed brood, wax production to build comb, and the need to generate heat. I find the calories needed to generate brood feed are by far the largest need in my region.

A hive that is feeding sheet after sheet of fresh larvae will eat every drop of nectar arriving at the hive. Only after brood production slows down (and hive demography shifts to favor foragers) does nectar begin to accumulate in a new hive. Comb production is a added drag.

The point a which a hive reaches optimum population and transitions to hoarding is dependent on the race of bees, the beekeeper's management, and the floral resource of the exact location of the apiary.

A split made during the nectar flow will often store more honey than a "wide open" hive. The unemployed bees in the split store prodigious quantities of nectar, this crowds the brood nest (empty at that time), and the queenright hive that develops never has the capacity to lay sheet after sheet of hungry larvae. The downside is these hives become "fall swarms".

Highly selected commercial Italian stock will never slow down larvae production -- and in my region enter August with 60,000 bees in the nest, 8 sheets of unbroken larvae, and zero stores -- AND not a flower in bloom for miles. I cheer their productivity and curse their lack of foresight. These highly unstable nests will build off a 5 frame (queen added) nuc in two months, becoming 3 deep behemoths. These require "babysitting" through the fall to get them ready for winter -- feed, mite control, robbing control, etc. Mites are worse (since this is a function of eggs laid).

An ideal bee for my climate enters the summer dearth with a smaller brood nest and manages itself for the "long game".
 
#26 ·
marcos bees,

Interesting post! I first picked up on your location because I had lived in Jakarta, Indonesia for many years and worked from Sumatra, to Kalamantan, to Irian Jaya. Did not raise bees at the time however, but had as a kid growing up in central PA. I was going to say that just south of the equator in Indonesia you should have nectar available year round except during the height of the monsoon rains. Since you are actually in PA now I would say don't count on much of a crop the first year (however the drawn comb is a big plus) but concentrate on getting the girls through the first winter. IMO. the best advise in this entire thread comes from "oldtimer" in Post #11, "management" !

Hope that you enjoyed Indonesia as much as I did.
Steve
 
#30 ·
not everyone who feeds syrup has syrup honey. one needs to know how to manage syrup feeding so it doesn't end up in the honey.
feeding 166lbs of sugar to each of your hives last year does not sound like good syrup management to me.
sure hope your honey wasn't adulterated, did you have it tested?
 
#33 ·
How do we expect to make 6-8 hives and a normal honey crop from 4 packages? Oldtimer nailed it:

"It's about management."


With all of the worries about CCD, mites and SHB, no one talks about the proper managing of hives anymore.
Find some textbooks from the 1930 - 1950's.


Crazy Roland
 
#35 ·
It is all about management and pasture. I feed the bees until the two brood chambers are eighty percent full specially when drawing foundation. Then you put on supers and if the pasture is there, you get a honey crop. It is that simple. Bees are turning that feed into more bees not moving it into supers. Sometimes a huge crop is possible. In the seventies in North Dakota, the state average production was 148 pounds a year. Hard to belive if you listen to the never expect a crop crowd. I met that drawing foundation in those wonderful pasture days.
 
#40 ·
Certainly feeding is not mandatory if you don't have any goals or purpose. I'm not trying to recruit or coerce here. I am willing to instruct those who want to be productive in what works for me and a lot of others. I guess i won't see you competing at the farmers market. I am still selling honey twice a month at the market! Doesn't that say anything?
 
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