[infofly]

Hello there,

For those in Connecticut -- how is the honey flow so far? I hope you have better luck than me, because this is the second season in the row with no honey in the super. I have only one full hive and couple of nucs. The hive is loaded with honey in the top deep outside frames, there is some honey in the bottom deep. But the super has not been touched at all this year.
I wonder if this is normal or maybe I should look for another queen better adapted to my local area?
Can someone please recommend a good honey producing queen for NE?

Thanks.

 

[Fuzzy]

Even in Connecticut, queens do not produce honey. Only worker bees produce honey.
What you want is a queen that will lay 2000-3000 eggs per day and have enough open brood space to accomodate her.

 

[sqkcrk]

Hey infofly, it's only June. There's still time for some honey to be produced. But it does seem to me like you aught to have more then what you do. What's going on w/ other beeks in your area.

Whenever I have a really good crop of honey, I take credit for that crop being produced. When I don't have a good crop, I blame the manager. Which is me again. So, what i am saying is, maybe it isn't the bees?

Tell us more. How long have you been at this beekeeping thing? Do you know others in your area who have the same vocation? Belong to a club? Have a mentor? Where and when did you get your bees? What kind of hives do you run? Langs or Top Bars or what? How did your bees come through the winter? have they swarmed?(I suspect they have and there goes your honey).

Just thought I'd ask.

 

[Peter]

Hello there,

The hive is loaded with honey in the top deep outside frames, there is some honey in the bottom deep. But the super has not been touched at all this year.


Thanks.

If you have a queen excluder on remove it. I've stopped using excluders as I think honey excluder is a better name for them as the bees are very loath to go up through them.

I'm not that far north of you and within the next few days will start adding supers to hives that were started from packages May 10th. Packages were Italin bees matched with Carniolan queens. The drew out all the frames in the 2nd deeps in less than 2 weeks and have capped brood, uncapped brood and eggs over 1/2 the frames already.

 

[infofly]

This is my 3rd season, bees are from last year package of italians, very typical lang hive -- two deep boxes plus super on top. I am not using queen excluder. They came out of winter in very good condition, good population but the spring buildup was not very dynamic. I am pretty sure they have not swarmed, I've been monitoring them very closely.
There is tons of traffic in front of the hive, some capped honey is present in upper box on outside frames. But they are not using the super at all.
I am using foundationless frames, only one frame in the super is partially filled with comb, the rest are empty. All frames have been used before, I do crush and strain method of honey harvest. The same setup worked before.
My first year was awesome, I got around 30 pounds of honey from one package of italian bees. Last year was lousy because of the weather.
Maybe it is me, maybe I am doing something wrong, but what makes me thinking about the queen is the brood pattern. It's rather spotty, with nectar filled cells in between brood.
So, I was thinking about getting new queen for the hive, and making the the nuc with the old queen -- I am not giving up on her yet.
That's why I am asking about queen recommendations for my area.

 

[Oldbee]

"They came out of winter in very good condition, good population but the spring buildup was not very dynamic."
"..what makes me thinking about the queen is the brood pattern. It's rather spotty, with nectar filled cells in between brood."

Maybe the hive had a Nosema infection; not enough to kill the hive in the spring but it may have effected the queen's egg production. Ob.

"Nosema infected bees do not attend or feed the queen to the same extent as healthy bees, which helps the queen to escape infection. When the queen does become infected her ovaries degenerate and her egg laying rate is reduced due to atrophy of the oocytes. Queens that become infected by the parasite during the brood rearing season are likely to be superseded by the bees."

"When the disease is severe, colony populations may become depleted and eventually reduce to a handful of bees and a queen. This is often known as "spring dwindling". Colonies that are only mildly affected can recover." >> http://www.dave-cushman.net/bee/nosema.html

"The frustrating thing about nosema is that “the majority of Nosema-infected colonies will appear normal, with no obvious signs of disease even when the disease is sufficient to cause significant losses in honey production and pollination efficiency” (Hornitzky 2005)." >> http://www.scientificbeekeeping.com//index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=48