[Oneshoo]

First year Beek. Installed 2 Nucs into 8 frame deeps here on the New Jersey Shore on May 4. One of my colonies will have 2 medium honey supers completely filled with capped honey by next weekend. So now what do I do??? lol

I am in agricultural zone 7A here at the Jersey Shore. I am thinking that I can extract 1 super?? Other Beeks in the area have told me that I need about 60lbs of honey going into the Winter. The supers weigh approx. 30-40 lbs a piece? Going to give away any honey that I extract. I would just like to set myself up with the best possible scenario going into Winter. Thanks for your advise in advance.

 

[squarepeg]

congrats on your colonies making such good progress oneshoo.

if you are not interested in the honey i would consider leaving most of the honey on the hives. sometimes winter drags on and sometimes a wet spring can run a colony low on stores during the spring build up.

you can always take this year's honey off once the nectar starts flowing next spring.

 

[JWPalmer]

On the flip side,.if you are interested in the honey for gifting and such, go ahead and extract both supers, leaving the bees only the capped honey in the brood nest. Put the supers back on the hive once extracted and start feeding 1:1 for now. They will have the comb filled back up with "sugar honey" in no time. This you will leave for the bees. We need about 40# total so one medium super of stores will see the bees in our area through mid-March or so.

I am also in USDA zone 7a.

 

[DTD350]

I was about to post a similar question. I have 4 - 10 frame Langstroth hives. 2 of them, I have two deep brood boxes full and I put honey supers on them 2ish weeks ago. I'm about to do an inspection this weekend and am thinking, if those honey supers are full, I plan to put another on each, placed between the honey super that I currently have on now and the top brood box. Should I just leave the first honey box on and harvest both boxes of honey after the spring flow next year, or should I take that first honey box off and harvest it in the fall and leave the newest honey box on for winter food for the bees? Or should I take both honey boxes off this fall and leave them with what they have in the two brood boxes for the winter? This is my third season keeping bees. The first two seasons I lost my bees. Once in November and the next in January and I really want to be successful this year. I am finding I am questioning every decision I am making. Thank you and sorry, I don't mean to de-rail the original posters original question.

 

[squarepeg]

part of the decision making has to do with knowing just how much honey is in the double deeps.

i.e. if the bottom deep is mostly empty and the broodnest is mostly in the upper deep that would change the calculation.

 

[Oneshoo]

No de-rail at all DTD350. You ask all great questions! I guess we are all worried about the best way to hopefully get our hives through the Winter??

 

[DTD350]

Ok so I just got in from my inspection. The larger of the two hives I was writing about filled up the honey super I put in there 2+ weeks ago so I put another on. However, I don’t see any signs of brood. I’m thinking the hive isn’t queen right. It was noisy and was acting aggressively. Not sure what to do with that hive. The second hive was calm and had most of the honey box full of honey but not quite so I didn’t add a box onto it. This one had quite a bit of brood in it. What to do, what to do...