Location, Location, Location!! No kidding just take a look at some of the per hive yields in SD, ND, Sask, and Manitoba. I'm sure there are others. A very short concentrated season. guys up there that don't get a 150 lb average want to know whats wrong.

 

The grass is always greener.
According to the national honey report:

SD avg. per hive:
2007 52lbs.
2008 95 lbs.
2009 66 lbs.

3 yr. avg. 71 lbs.

 

The amount of honey a single hive produces depends on many factors. There really is no trick that you can do to make the bees produce more with the exception of making sure they have the population to forage and gather.

 

a few of my hives will get around 300lbs of honey this year. they are over winter here in ny

 

a few of my hives will get around 300lbs of honey this year.

Are you saying that you have individual hives that you will extract 300 lbs of honey from? That is incredible. How do you do it?

 

It looks like I should hit a 175#-180# APH this year. But I'm only a honey producer, and I take everything.:thumbsup:

 

Skill and luck in addition to location. I'm heavy into luck. Of the three parent colonies I split, only one of them didn't try to swarm. This hive drew the foundation for 4 medium supers and has packed them with honey, I extracted two of them least month and they are full again. That will make 6 x 35 pounds = 210 pounds for that one hive. The others will have averaged two supers for the season. With more skill I might have prevented the others from attempting to swarm and thus had a consistently larger field force to gather nectar.
One other factor, I think, is drawn comb or the lack of it; Starting off you have none; The bees want to back fill the space in the brood nest rather than draw out more foundation; Then they swarm away.
I'm wondering if next year I'll be that much better of a beekeeper, or will the fact that I can bang on supers with drawn comb help take some pressure off the swarming urge. Who knows! :scratch: I'll tell you next year.

 

To get 200+ lbs./hive I believe the perfect storm must take place, location, weather, hives that come through the winter strong and healthy, great queens, prevent swarming without them missing a heartbeat, giving all drawn combs especially the supers, and lastly once again location and weather. John

 

Don't forget cutdown splits done at just the right time...

 

Householder,
When you say all, I have to ask how do you extract frames that have brood in them, without making a mess in the honey?

 

I expect to average 200 lbs/hive. Last year 7 lbs/hive. Weather and location determine flow along wih good bees(last yrs bees were stronger!). My best year was 1982 275 lbs/hive. Some yards will get close this year and a few hives have hit deep super number 7. What made our crop was the two droughts thinning the grass flollowed by last years wet season germinating clover everywhere. THen in most lcoations sufficient rain this year coupled with humid hot weather. MOst commercial guys extract frame with brood in it...guess there is some bee juice in the honey!

 

. MOst commercial guys extract frame with brood in it...guess there is some bee juice in the honey!

Ahh hello....queen excluders!!!!

Our first year we bought 2# packages, two hives. All the comb and supers were brand new, no drawn comb. That year we had a drought and alfalfa thrives in hot dry weather. Our production from two hives was 620 pounds.

Our average yield is 150-180 a year per hive. Some years we do consideralby better. The last 4 years have seen very wet, flood like conditions and cool summers. The 150 average is on those years. If we get a hot dry year, our bees go crazy. And yes all this happens between July 12 and August 31---give or take a couple of weeks on either side of the date.
We can easily get another 50+ pounds in the first two weeks of september, but we chose to do our fall prep instead of getting the honey crop to minimize spring deadouts.

Location location and location


I would imagine by the time honey householder extracts his brood chambers, the queens have shut down and brood is at a minimum in the honey house

 

>Most commercial guys extract frame with brood in it...guess there is some bee juice in the honey!

I didn't need to know that!

 

Most will leave the brood capped and only scratch open the honey when extracting frames with brood in them.

 

So the larva wont fly out? I had a few frames with drone larva one bottom so I pulled them out with scratcher. Guess I should have just left them eh.

 

so established hives that were overwintered, drawn
frames, prevent swarming, location(which I'm still
cofused about), weather, management, and a little
luck. Well is that all
I had one colony swarm 3 times that I know of, if I had
prevented them all I would have had a huge return then.
I'm learning, I'm learning.

as always, Thanks everyone!!
I think I'd be totally confused without you.

 

My first thought, you must first be in an area that has enough forage for hives to produce the desired quantity. Some areas are just not capable. So you need to do a good assessment and check with others around you.

It starts with an overwintered hive with a queen that is only 6-8 months old. You also need 5-9 supers with fully drawn comb ready to go. Then it is all about the quality of your observation powers. You need to know when they will start swarming. Around here it is mid to late Feb. So at the end of Jan I go thru the brood boxes and pull ALL honey out and backfill with drawn comb ( at least 2 deeps ) NO LAYERS of honey in the middle of the top brood box. Then 2-3 weeks later each hive gets 2-3 empty supers on top of an excluder.
Now it becomes a matter of understanding when you get nectar flows. Once the bees have made significant progress on the topmost super I will slide 2 more supers on just on top of the excluder. Yeah, I know that it is work but it works for me. When the top two supers are capped off I will remove, spin and put back (again directly on top of the excluder).
If you are successful, you will be amazed at the entrance activity. “Monster” hives will have 20-30 flights per second. Normal hives are only around 5 per second. For the last few years I have managed to get 3 or 4 boomer hives like this. Two of them were early swarm retrievals that were put into drawn brood boxes. They each gave me 5 supers.

Fuzzy

 

The location part is relatively simple. Upper mid westis such an area, Canadian Prairie provinces. Arkansas isn't one of them. I don't know the state average but it isn't in that range of your desires. To get that kind of return in your state you would have to be exceptionally skilled and 4 or 5 times luckier. If that were the case you could use your special talents at the race track or the casino.

Jean-Marc

 

>Most commercial guys extract frame with brood in it...guess there is some bee juice in the honey!

I hate this kind of a statement. Most commercial guys I know don't extract brood frames at all...it's all honey supers. The odd super that has a frame or two of brood in it is placed back in the box, not run through the uncapper. Brother...

 

. Most commercial guys I know don't extract brood frames at all...

haha besides even if it was run through im sure bee juice is somewhere around 95% water anyway.

 

Who extracts brood boxes? I run all my hives in a single deep w/queen excluders. No brood!:doh: Who wants that mess? 175 lb avg. is over 800+ hives. I've had some hives produce 12-14 mediums already this year.(yes almost a barrel from one hive.) It takes that kind of hive to get those kind of avg. Drawn combs help out A LOT!

 

<snip>I've had some hives produce 12-14 mediums already this year.(yes almost a barrel from one hive.)!

Almost a barrell...WOW! i have to ask though what size your barrels are. Ours are 45 gal drums which hold 600-630 pounds of honey...net.

 

Honey householder, do you pull brood frames just before spring flow to force nurse bees to be foragers sooner? Dont know how someone has bees and no brood otherwise? Just trying to learn.

 

HH,

When you say some hives have given 12-14 medium supers of honey, are these hives from the 2 pound packages you started this year, or are they overwintered hives? (I didn't think you overwintered any) John

 

John,
Yes from a 2 lb package. I produce most of my comb honey from splits from my 2 lb package hives.

 

I use 55 gal. net 660 and I said almost a barrel. say 600 lbs. I call them my super queens.

 

Mike, the question I was try to answer is how do I extract all the honey without extracting brood.
I run all my hives for just 6 months and then shake and sell them in the fall. By running them in single deeps the bees put 90-95% of the honey above the queen excluder. I do not extract any of the brood frames. The little bit of honey that is left in the brood boxes and clean up and gotten ready for the new bees in the spring.
So NO I don't get all of the honey but atless 90% of it.

 

Stink...thats fantastic!

 

just took 85lbs of honey from one hive. took about 140lbs from the same hive earlyer in the year and goldenrod is just now starting to flow in. i can smell it when i go out to my bee yard.

 

just took 85lbs of honey from one hive.

How are you managing your hives? Are you weighing this hoey after extracting or are you estimating how much honey you are getting by how many boxes of a certain size you have taken from a hive? I really want to know how you do what you are saying you have done.

 

What part of Wolcott, NY do you live in?

As far as that goes, I have never heard of anyone in the whole state of NY during the last 20 years making 300 lbs of honey on beehives since the 1950s or 60s.

I do know a guy who says that he gets 150 to 180 lbs of honey from his hives, which he intensively manages by raising frames of brood above an excluder and replacing that frame of brood w/ drawn comb every 8 or 10 days. Is that what our friend from Wolcott is doing?

 

As far as that goes, I have never heard of anyone in the whole state of NY during the last 20 years making 300 lbs of honey on beehives since the 1950s or 60s.

I have Mark, most recently in 2005. Great year with 135 lb average and a total of 58T. I've also had wintered nucs build up on comb and produce 300 lbs.

 

Yeah, its mind boggling to me how much production some beeks get from a hive. In the case of Honey Householder, he starts out every year with 2 pound packages, he runs just a single deep brood chamber with an excluder over it, then piles on the supers. I can see how most of the honey ends up above the excluder, because the queen needs the whole deep for brood and some pollen stores, but what is a stumbling block to me is how you can keep a colony with a real good queen from swarming in that setup. Another thing, I always thought that getting that kind of production requires lots of brood, surely more than one deep worth, it just amazes me to no end. John

 

Yeah, its mind boggling to me how much production some beeks get from a hive.

Location, Location, Location!!!! What bothers me, unless your in Nebraska type prarie and can actually see the 6000-8000 acres your bees will forage in, how do you know what the forage around you will offer? I know beeks here that got far less than me and many who got far more, and they dont live more than 10 miles away! Plenty of farm and undeveloped around me but few roads..i need an airplane to see my potential bee forage!

 

Never seem to know what to expect from my hives. They usually bring me a harvest yielding about the same every year, but it seems they do it differently every year. I just cant predict these little guys.
I work in averages. I expect certain things to happen, when I manipulate the hive a certain way, within an expected limit. If the hive performs outside that limit, I manipulate it again bringing it back a bit or ahead a bit. I expect a certain amount of swarming, and I expect my splits and packages to produce less than my wintered hives.

BUT a real funny thing happened to me this year.
I bought packages this year. Made up three extra yards. Two of my package yards produced about what I expected, the third is tailing honey like you would nt believe. I have three other yards within that area, and they are producing normally. But this package yard has produced 7 boxes on average over two pulls, plugged full of honey! Plugged full because they had caught me by surprise within two supering rounds.
My boxes coming in average 35 lbs of honey, these were much heavier and constantly full, so I am guessing 40-45 lbs per box. That particular yard has yielded 350 lbs of honey per hive. The rest of my operation is running 150 right now. Not done the season yet.

Who Knows!