# honey production this year



## beemaster2015 (Aug 30, 2015)

just wondering how everyone done this year I got 53lbs out of 1 hive the second one didn't produce this year it was a bad year in Ontario because of wet and cool summer ????? but I did get more than enough for myself.


----------



## ericweller (Jan 10, 2013)

I had a bad year in North Georgia. I only got a third of what I did last year and I had 4 more production hives. My 14 production hives only produced a 12 gallon harvest. Our Sourwood crop was affected by the cool, wet summer weather. I am looking forward to next season. The plan is to get to 25 hives and a 55 gallon harvest. Now if I can just get my bees to commit to the plan.........


----------



## d16795 (Apr 9, 2016)

Central Illinois. Started with 2 overwintered hives. Both swarmed and caught. 1 Split. Got 65 lbs. total this year. 12 frames extracted summer and fall. Enough to use and give away to friends and family. Told everyone I'm giving it away this year. Not enough to bother with marketing. Next year it'll be for sale.


----------



## Cjj (Dec 12, 2015)

Here in Pa had a pretty good year , 30 production hives , we got 930 lbs


----------



## Hogback Honey (Oct 29, 2013)

I didn't weigh it but I figure about 60 - 65 pounds or so from 2 hives. I've 4 hives but the other 2 did not produce any extra. The buck brush did not bloom as expected, hardly any blooms on some plants, none on others. I suspect some of my 'honey' may be honeydew.


----------



## gww (Feb 14, 2015)

I got 7 gal and endend up with eight hives/nucs some which did not build up too big. I started with three hives/nucs depending on how you counts and caught two tiny swarms. I also fed 200+ lbs of sugar to the small hives and to put some winter weight on. I have no ideal what is normal or good or bad. I have sold about sixty bucks worth of honey and given or ate the rest. I have maby a gal or so left. I was pretty chinsy with gifts except to my two daughters and am amazed at how fast it dissapeared.
Cheers
gww


----------



## MissHoney (Apr 17, 2016)

I had to start over. All three of my hives were dead-outs by February. So I started again in April with 3 nucs, then caught 2 feral swarms the first week of May, then a third swarm Labor day weekend (I doubt it will make it, re-homed it more for the property owner's peace of mind). Hopefully this winter will be kinder to the bees than last.


----------



## aran (May 20, 2015)

Not exactly sure but I think we harvested over 300lbs from 5 production colonies. Made a ton of splits this year too.
The mild weather was great this year!


----------



## beenoob (Jun 16, 2016)

Still learning, but 6 production hives, 450lbs I came out of last winter pretty heavy, and a bunch of splits and swarms, at 15 hives now. The big debate is what to do next year, grow or contain. I guess we will see my winter losses.


----------



## JpArnoldApiaries (Mar 26, 2017)

I'm located in Eastern North Carolina, between 4 hives we have roughly harvested 210lbs, given a few pounds here or there. Our goldenrod flow was the best I've seen in years


----------



## Dan the bee guy (Jun 18, 2015)

Had a year I don't want to see again. AFB showed up and I had to burn over half of the hives. The three of the hives we had left produced about 240 pounds of honey and we got 9 more splits from them all home raised queens.


----------



## RudyT (Jan 25, 2012)

Bee Culture estimated the harvest per honey production hive is down 20%, plus beekeepers reduced honey production hive numbers by about 20%. Those numbers are rough from memory so off slightly. On the other hand, some locations had a good year despite some rain at the wrong times -- like the day the black locust bloom began.


----------



## Vectorjet (Feb 20, 2015)

Harvested 250 pounds from three hives. Had a good black locust and tulip poplar bloom, but the weather limited the bee's foraging during these times. The basswood bloom was great and this is when these hives packed on the weight as the basswood bloom happens after the bees had plenty of time to build up and these hives had large populations. The japanees knotweed and goldenrod flow was mediocre at best, just got too dry, but they did get enough stores so I didn't have to feed to get them up to weight for winter.


----------



## cgybees (Apr 20, 2015)

beemaster2015 said:


> just wondering how everyone done this year I got 53lbs out of 1 hive the second one didn't produce this year it was a bad year in Ontario because of wet and cool summer ????? but I did get more than enough for myself.


bout 70lb a hive our here in Alberta, but they drew out about 6 boxes a hive too, so that's not too bad. Best I heard of was 280lb / hive.


----------



## DanielD (Jul 21, 2012)

16 hives were in production mode and harvested 1100 pounds. The best colony did around 200 and a couple did very little to none. Also had 250 deeps and almost 400 medium acorn foundations drawn since most of them started as 8 frame medium nucs overwintered. Some main flow crop couldnt be taken because of my bad management of top entrances. Liittle feeding this fall too. I considered it good.


----------



## blackowl (Jul 8, 2015)

Harvest is good this month! I'm just starting out as a beekeeping and it's doing good as of now! I'm from Southeast Asia, so I never experience any problems concerning seasons.


----------



## psm1212 (Feb 9, 2016)

Started Spring with 4 production hives. Split off 4 nucs in April. Caught a swarm in May and a swarm in August. Lost a nuc (my fault) and did a combine of the August swarm with my weakest hive. Going into this winter with 8 prodution colonies. Pulled honey on June 3 and again on July 2. Total of 30 gallons. All gone. Could have sold another 30 gallons.


----------



## beemaster2015 (Aug 30, 2015)

sounds like a lot of you had a great year very interesting reads keep the stories coming !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


----------



## R.Varian (Jan 14, 2014)

We started this spring with 26 colonies split to 106, ended up harvesting around 30 gal.which felt like a small bonus to an interesting year.


----------



## gww (Feb 14, 2015)

R........
That is a lot of splitting.
Cheers
gww


----------



## PeterP (Feb 5, 2014)

I'm in eastern Ontario like the OP. My crop was down about 10% (about 110 lbs per production hive) from previous year which was a good year for me. I pull honey 3 times, July, Aug, sept and was worried because of the cool wet weather mid spring. The challenge with this years wet weather was controlling swarming. If you didn't you lost crop. The weather locked in the bees for several days just as they reached peak populations stimulating swarming. I had 3 of 10 production hives swarm. I split up 2 before they got away and made up 9 nucs with the queen cells from the 3 swarm hives. I promoted 2 of my overwintered nucs to production hives. 

The saturated ground gave a boost to mid and late summer wild flowers. In my area this made up for the slow start in gathering honey.

Regards Peter


----------



## R.Varian (Jan 14, 2014)

gww said:


> R........
> That is a lot of splitting.
> Cheers
> gww


OTS


----------



## handhewn (Jun 7, 2013)

Started with 4 hives. Split 2. Gave one hive to a young man who wanted to get started ( State Forester ) Then got visited by a Bear and one cub. Completely destroyed 3 hives and damaged another severely. Didn't even find all of the parts. Ended up with 3 working hives. After all that ended with about 5 gallons. I only pulled once in the fall. Was dark and surprisingly very sweet. Not bad for all the drama.


----------



## Treeman4646 (Sep 18, 2016)

I'll agree with you about the terrible summer. Did it ever stop raining? I'm near Prescott, not so far from Barry's Bay...
I started my first year this year with two nucs. I'm pretty sure one was queenless from the supplier (no he didn't make it right) and a few tries at producing a queen were fruitless. I think any virgin queens could easily have been washed out on mating flights by the many surprise torrential downpours... Just my inexperienced opinion though...
I did get just under 40 lbs from my one hive and I think I've left enough for the winter... We'll see...
I'm sure looking forward to next year...


----------



## frogpondwarrior (Aug 2, 2016)

Away part of the best harvest times. 20 days in June and 10 days Sept. Honey bound and swarms in June very little flow in Sept. 
I came out of last winter with only 3 and split to 16. Five were weak and lost 3 swarms from the 3 that over wintered. So we combined back to 11.
Very dry rest of Summer. As a result we only got 5 gal of honey from the 11 hives.
On the plus side we only fed about 100lbs of sugar this fall and everyone seem full. 
Wintering on 2 deeps with 10 and 8 frame equipment.


----------



## bison (Apr 27, 2011)

Best year ever in NorCal... over 1,000 lbs from about 16 hives. Long, wet spring likely helped out.


----------



## Tim KS (May 9, 2014)

Last year was a bust....maybe only 100 lbs.

Started this year with 8 colonies....we split a couple of large colonies and caught a couple of swarms too....ended the year with 18 colonies. We managed to get about 350 lbs. of honey.....most of it came from 6 hives. Really dry summer.


----------

