# How do you get 180-200 lbs of honey per hive??



## Mrmizilplix

I was reading in another post that someone was getting
180-200 lbs of honey per hive. how many frames is that
(are they small, medium, large) does it take to accomplish
this? that's alot isn't it? is it some kind of reversing
procedure? please explain, I would love to get that
much honey!!!


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## hpm08161947

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.


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## DigitalBishop

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.


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## queenking

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


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## The Honey Householder

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


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## Adrian Quiney WI

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.


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## jmgi

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


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## brac

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?


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## suttonbeeman

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!


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## jmgi

>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!


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## Beeslave

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


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## Mrmizilplix

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.


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## Fuzzy

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


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## jean-marc

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


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## honeyshack

suttonbeeman said:


> . 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


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## alpha6

Suttonbee said:


> >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...


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## Woodside

alpha6 said:


> . 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.


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## sqkcrk

honeyshack said:


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


Uhh HELLO, if you have 500 colonies and 10% of the excluders don't work you will have 50 colonies w/ brood above the excluder. If you have a hive that has an excluder in it and it swarms, the newly mated queen often goes to the top of the hive.


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## The Honey Householder

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!


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## Mike Snodgrass

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.


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## honeyshack

sqkcrk said:


> Uhh HELLO, if you have 500 colonies and 10% of the excluders don't work you will have 50 colonies w/ brood above the excluder. If you have a hive that has an excluder in it and it swarms, the newly mated queen often goes to the top of the hive.


225 colonies, two colonies with brood above the excluder. Both times moved the brood to the brood chamber. Not hard to do when you know what you are looking for when pulling honey....and that woudl be, bees that do not want to leave the boxes no matter what you do. And make sure your hives are strong enough to use and excluder.


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## honeyshack

The Honey Householder said:


> <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.


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## jmgi

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


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## sqkcrk

honeyshack said:


> 225 colonies, two colonies with brood above the excluder. Both times moved the brood to the brood chamber.


Yeah, which supports my experience. thank you.


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## sqkcrk

queenking said:


> 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?


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## The Honey Householder

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


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## The Honey Householder

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


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## The Honey Householder

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.


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## honeyshack

Stink...thats fantastic!


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## honeyshack

sqkcrk said:


> 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?


I have done it. But it takes the perfect storm here to do it. The summers have to be dang hot and dang dry. Here our main crops for honey is alfalfa and clover. The alfalfa is for seed, and there are a fair many producers in our area and alfalfa loves heat. So, on hot years if we have the boxes we can do it.


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## queenking

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.


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## sqkcrk

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?


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## sqkcrk

queenking said:


> 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.


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## jmgi

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


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## Mike Snodgrass

jmgi said:


> 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!


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## Ian

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!


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## Ian

>>To get 200+ lbs./hive I believe the perfect storm must take place, location, weather

Not really, Just acres over acres of nectar dripping flowers 

Ever open feed your hives? Notice they just keep bringing in the nectar if its avaliable. If their nest is full , they store up. If up is full, they just keep going further up.
What I am saying is, if the nectar is there, they will bring it in


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## hossein yeganehrad

Hi, i'm a beekeeper in vancouver aria and Alberta , i have my 2500hive in 2 pollination and i manange other 3500 hive, then by end of jully i go for honey production in Alberta , two box of bees with 10fram brood 100lb in 2 weeks is normal, in 2004 i had 150lb per hive in 3 weeks,
but for alberta beekeeper 150lb is low production i know beekeepers have 250lb per hive or more , last year i had 100lb , but i move to alberta jully 20 , honey flow start by jully first and stop IN 6 TO 8 weeks,


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## Michael Bush

Put them in the middle of 8,000 acres of sweet clover....


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## Michael Palmer

sqkcrk said:


> 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.


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## sqkcrk

Got any yards you aren't using next year Mike?


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## kbenz

HH,
I was told in another thread, it was not likely to get a crop from a first year package. how do you do it? what do you do with your bees if you don't overwinter them?


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## Omie

kbenz said:


> HH, ....what do you do with your bees if you don't overwinter them?


http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_6ud8h1UHfr0/S4T0N9bWTDI/AAAAAAAAAT4/RA321z-QYsI/s320/Bee+hive.JPG


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## The Honey Householder

kbenz said:


> HH,
> I was told in another thread, it was not likely to get a crop from a first year package. how do you do it? what do you do with your bees if you don't overwinter them?


I buy 600+ 2 lb packages every year around March 20. Then I split 250-300 of them to make up the hives for production. I spray my brood frames full of syrup and make sure they have a few frames of pollen too. That way they have everything they need to get thing started. 
After production is finished I sell and shake the bees into buyers boxes. Then I start cleaning up for the new season. In all and all saves me a tanker or two of feed, and I have better production with new packages the next year. No mites to treat for too.


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## sqkcrk

And all of the brood combs? What do you do w/ them? Do you sell them along w/ the hives of bees that you sell in the fall? Or do you only sell packages in the fall? What kind of beekeeper would want your bees shook into their equipment in October? This is such a unique idea to me. Something I am unfamiliar w/.


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## honeyshack

HH,
I like that idea. The idea of not wintering and just buying packages. However in Canada packages are well over $100.00 each. So for us it is just plain not economical...too bad


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## jmgi

sqkcrk,

I believe what HH does is shake the bees out of his equipment and into the buyers equipment. Then he takes his empty brood boxes and cleans them up and fills the empty combs with syrup to be ready to start over again the next spring. Plus he gets all the honey left in the combs. I think the buyer of the bees is taking them down south for the winter. Actually, makes more sense the more I think about it the way HH does it. When you produce the tonnage he does off packages in the first year, its almost a no brainer to just start off fresh every year, and not have to worry about overwintering and what you will end up with in spring. John


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## The Honey Householder

Honeyshack that is double what we pay in the US. Your crop yeild would have to bee 200+ lbs to make it worth it.

Sqkcrk, I posted my fall bee for sale back in Feb. and had to chose who to sell too and how much. Bees are worth more to others in the fall then to others. I don't need them after the harvest, so I pass them on to someone that does. For a small cost ofcourse.:thumbsup:


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## Beeslave

There is a guy from MN that also blows the bees out of his boxes into anothers at the end of the year. I've worked some of those bees in FL over the winter and they did very well on citrus. Very few queens are lost when transfering from 1 hive to another.


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## WI-beek

Beeslave said:


> 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.


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## Bens-Bees

jmgi said:


> 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...


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## sqkcrk

The Honey Householder said:


> Sqkcrk, I posted my fall bee for sale back in Feb. and had to chose who to sell too and how much. Bees are worth more to others in the fall then to others. I don't need them after the harvest, so I pass them on to someone that does. For a small cost ofcourse.:thumbsup:


Along w/ the frames of brood? What do you do w/ the frames of brood? 

Do they need them to boost their weak colonies? Why do they need them? Nieve question, perhaps, but I don't fully understand.


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## The Honey Householder

The company that bought bees this year I thinks is running them for almonds this next spring. 
I just blow the brood out of the combs with 120 psi. My combs are so old that it doesn't tare them up to bad.


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## sqkcrk

Then feed them to some chickens or add them to the compost pile? You must have hoards of yellowjackets working on that pile of brood.

You do this when? September? October? Just curious about the timing.


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## jim lyon

hpm08161947 said:


> 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.


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## jmgi

>The grass is always greener.

I'm thinking that those huge 150-200 lb. per hive seasons are not a regular thing out there, but their state averages are probably among the highest in the country though. John


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## Gregg

My "averages" over the last few years (I count hives that produced honey that year: hives that went queenless over the summer & didn't produce any honey are not counted; late nucs or queenless hives that were given brood/eggs in the summer and did raise a queen and produce some honey, even if it's only 10 lbs, are counted):

2007 95 lbs
2008 135 lbs
2009 51 lbs


As has been stated several times, "averages" are just numbers, what really counts is the number of drums or total production at the end of the season.


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## sqkcrk

What really counts is a Profit instead of a Loss more often than not on your Farm Profit and Loss Statement.


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## jim lyon

Didnt mean to give a false picture with just the past three years here are a few more statewide averages so that we can get a little truer picture.

02 51 lbs.
03 70 lbs.
04 105 lbs.
05 79 lbs.
06 47 lbs. 
07 52 lbs.
08 95 lbs.
09 66 lbs.

Lets see that gives us an 8 yr. average of ummmm 71 again! I'll be darned.


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## redbee

Looks like the average will be down again,at least in my area ,,disapointing it looked so good earlyer


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## Michael Palmer

sqkcrk said:


> Got any yards you aren't using next year Mike?


Nah, all my yards are full of bees. 

The boys took honey off a yard in W Chazy yesterday. Most were 180-200. One had a deep of foundation that was drawn and fully capped, and 4 full mediums above it.

And no trucking bills to South Carolina, Mark.  
Mike's going to pay off the credit card this year. Whoo Hooo!


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## sqkcrk

Michael Palmer said:


> Nah, all my yards are full of bees.


So, do you think that I could make that sort of crop if I followed your methods? I'd like to know what the Wakefields make on their nonmigratory colonies. Buster ddin't take all of his south and I don't recall that he made such big crops, did he?

I'm leaving some here for the winter this year.


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## KevinR

I'd be curious to know what is around these beeyards that are gettting 180-200lbs of honey.

I've read on the that various things can be planted to get 100-800lbs of honey per planted acre. I wonder how viable that would.

If I planted 20-50 acres of alfalfa, clover, etc.. Would I actually see those kinds of numbers?


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## LSPender

Not sure of beekeeper math.

180 to 200 lbs?

med supers hold on ave 20 to 22 lbs of extractalbe, sellable honey, deeps from 30 to 35 lbs on a consistant basis.

So how do 4 med & 1 deep get to be 180 lbs?

4 x 20 = 80 + 30 = 130 Lbs

Could someone explain this,


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## Fuzzy

LSpender,

Something is not right. 10 frame mediums when full contain much more than 20-22lbs of honey. 2 medium boxes fill or overfill a 5 gallon bucket when extracted. So it is at least 30lbs and frequently 35 lbs per box. 

Have not weighed the deeps but it is a lot more than 35lbs.


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## jim lyon

Fuzzy is right. We run 500+ mediums on a typical day and find that they average around 35 lbs. and can net around 40 when really full. Deeps will net from 50 to 55 lbs. with a really full one going about 60 lbs.


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## KevinR

A 10 frame deep hive body full of honey per the books... 

Weighs in at 80-110lbs. 

You would loose some for box, frames, wax weight. But I would expect that it's less than 15lbs.

A medium is suspose to be 2/3's of a deep so it should be around the 45-55lb mark.

-Kevin


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## LSPender

Jim, how many barrels a day are you extracting ?

if 500 med. ( 12 pallets) ave 35 lbs each that is 17,500 lbs of honey divided by 640 =27 1/3 barrels of honey per day.


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## jim lyon

25 is a pretty average day for us. Depending on how much we have to do and how full the boxes are anywhere from 20 to 30 drums.


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## gregstahlman

yeah i'm pretty sure deeps put out a lot more than 30-35lbs


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## Michael Palmer

sqkcrk said:


> So, do you think that I could make that sort of crop if I followed your methods? I'd like to know what the Wakefields make on their nonmigratory colonies. Buster ddin't take all of his south and I don't recall that he made such big crops, did he?
> 
> I'm leaving some here for the winter this year.


I don't know. It's not just methods. Maybe it's three things. Location, management, and bees.

I have some pretty good honey producing locations. A good mix between the Valley and the hills. It seems that most years I can get a decent crop of something as there's so much variety here. I think your area of the St. Lawrence valley and Franklin county should be a good location, too. I've known beekeepers who have made great crops regularly. Look at Gerald P. Remember that guy in the St. L valley who used to clean up at EAS for his comb honey. Ray Chamberlin or something like that. And Buster made some huge crops. I can't remember the number of 60 lb tins he took from one yard once. You remember? Wasn't it something like 250?

Some of everyone's bees are capable of making a good crop. That's how you look at an area. Did any colonies in the yard make a good crop. Why didn't they all. That's how you look at someone's bees. Were any of them stellar? You select from those and your bees get more productive.

But management has to be geared towards honey production. It's difficult to produce splits, pollinate, and make honey from the same colonies. Something has to give. It's usually the honey crop except in best of years. How often do we have one of those?

So, I quit pollinating apples and I gave up splitting my colonies at Dandelion. Now I manage them for honey production, trying to produce huge, populous colonies. I run unlimited broodnests, super before Dandelion, and make sure they never run out of room to expand upwards. I try to get the most supers filled as possible before Goldenrod. With the supers full...or if I harvest them...the GR flow goes in the broodnests for winter.

Works for me.


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## sqkcrk

So, let's say i change one thing, that I cut out pollination. I take in $18,260.00 from 332 colonies. Decent spring income that pays the expenses of going south and all. Those same hives would have to produce 40 more lbs of honey sold at $1.50 per pound. Do you think that by cutting out pollijnation that that is reasonable to expect?


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## Skinner Apiaries

Always seemed like you'd get your pollination money while honey was always a gamble of sorts.


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## sqkcrk

I guess that's how I have seen it too. And I haven't noticed that the colonies that didn't go into pollination did any better than those that did, when it came to honey production. So, maybe it's the whole package. Stationary bees, selective breeding, overwintering nucs, expanded brood nest to avoid swarming and then reversing also, etc.

Someday I need to critically rethink my beekeeping strategy.


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## Michael Palmer

sqkcrk said:


> So, let's say i change one thing, that I cut out pollination. I take in $18,260.00 from 332 colonies. Decent spring income that pays the expenses of going south and all. Those same hives would have to produce 40 more lbs of honey sold at $1.50 per pound. Do you think that by cutting out pollijnation that that is reasonable to expect?


Well, that 40 pounds of honey at $1.50 comes to more than your pollination. But, it's not just changing one thing. Mark, last summer you were splitting your bees in June. Yes? And I found that pollinators didn't winter as well. And you're pollinating to pay for the expense of travelling south?? Then why bother!

Think of this...I make about 450 nucs to winter over. These from non-productive colonies. This spring I sold 200 at [email protected] That works out to more than your pollination contracts and I didn't have to move my bees anywhere and beekeepers were beating down my door to get my nucs. And I sold 600+ queens at [email protected] Now were talking twice as much as your pollination income. And, that's before the honey crop. With a poor crop last year, I still made enough to keep things running for another year and with a good crop this year I've recovered from last.

I'll say it this way...while pollinating Apples, my average long term honey crop was about 24T. After I quit pollinating and spring splitting my strong colonies, my last 10 year average is 40T. Good enough reason to change my management...in my opinion.


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## hpm08161947

Interesting discussion here... I'm thinking about something. What time in the spring do colonies have to be placed in Northern (Upstate NY) Apple Orchards and how long do they stay there? Don't worry - we are not moving colonies north.


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## Michael Palmer

My bees went into apples about May 12 in the northern Champlain valley, and out by 
Memorial day. The earliest I ever saw was May 7 and the latest May 21.

This year, there were blooming apples at the end of April. Crazy weird year.


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## hpm08161947

Hmm... so if the pollination dates for apples are the same in the Malone area, then Mark also has the option of dropping off his colonies in the blueberries (Mar 1-April 15 - at most) on his way from SC to NY - if he so chose.


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## sqkcrk

Pollination in the Champlain Valley, where I pollinate, no apples here that want pollination, came April 27th and we took them out about the 15th, if I recall correctly. Yes, I could pollinate blueberries in NC if anyone wanted to pay me to do so. But I heard that almost everything was already taken and that pollinating blueberries in NC is not good for the bees. Too much of a monoculture and little if any nectar coming in.


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## hpm08161947

sqkcrk said:


> Yes, I could pollinate blueberries in NC if anyone wanted to pay me to do so. But I heard that almost everything was already taken and that pollinating blueberries in NC is not good for the bees. Too much of a monoculture and little if any nectar coming in.


We'll talk about it over some BBQ this winter.


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## Michael Palmer

sqkcrk said:


> and that pollinating blueberries in NC is not good for the bees. Too much of a monoculture and little if any nectar coming in.


Jadczak told me that it was shown that the incidence of EFB went way up in bees on high bush blueberries in New Jersey.


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## hpm08161947

Are there any monocultures that are good for bees? Well - maybe squash - bees do seem to gain on squash, but that may not necessarily mean they are better off. Maybe apple orchards??


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## Skinner Apiaries

Mark, it's no worse than any other places with alot of pollination bees being dragged in. The real question is getting any contract large enough to make it worthwhile. If you don't work with large coops or larger farms, my experience is you get screwed. These blueberry guys are a wierd set, they've been having 3 frame splits dumped on them for years, and likewise, they're skeptics. All the bberry contracts Ive gotten its because the guy said "Oh 10 pallets isnt worth my time" and I though "well hell, that loads my little truck up." or in one case he dumped dead hives on one grower, and missed anothers bloom entirely. 

Blueberries has taught me alot, lessons reinforced in the cucumbers;

handshakes arent worth ****

paper contracts will hold water, in the field, in court

pull your bees before you do anything rash, burned hives will never fly in court favorably, apparently it isnt taken seriously here. or it wasnt in my case. Stay in your apples. Ill just make up nucs, I could sell everything not nailed down this year anyway.


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## Skinner Apiaries

hpm08161947 said:


> Are there any monocultures that are good for bees? Well - maybe squash - bees do seem to gain on squash, but that may not necessarily mean they are better off. Maybe apple orchards??


Almonds Almonds Almonds


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## sqkcrk

Michael Palmer said:


> Jadczak told me that it was shown that the incidence of EFB went way up in bees on high bush blueberries in New Jersey.


But not in Maine?


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## sqkcrk

hpm08161947 said:


> Are there any monocultures that are good for bees? Well - maybe squash - bees do seem to gain on squash, but that may not necessarily mean they are better off. Maybe apple orchards??


Well, I don't know. At least in the apples up here there are plenty of dandelions too.


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## sqkcrk

Buster says his best year was not that long ago, but must be ten years or there abouts, when he made an average of 220 lbs. Can't say why it happened or doesn't happen anymore.

Back in 1965 he got 185 cans of honey off of 80 colonies of bees in one yard that he workwed on shares. That would be about 138.75lbs per colony.


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## Ian

>>yeah i'm pretty sure deeps put out a lot more than 30-35lbs 

yes, but talking averages, with the full and the not so full comming off,


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## jean-marc

Sure you can get more than 35 pounds in adeep, but those with plenty of experience on the Canadian prairies will tell you that if you averaged more than that per box that you've missed some honey. Essentially your bees plugged out and ran out of storage room.

Jean-Marc


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## sqkcrk

Jean-marc, are your deeps 9 and 11/16 inches tall or 6 and 5/8 inches tall?


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## jean-marc

Mark 9 and 5/8 th's I believe.

Jean-Marc


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## sqkcrk

jean-marc said:


> Mark 9 and 5/8 th's I believe.
> 
> Jean-Marc


What!! Please reread my question. Unless you are just messin' w/ me.

Standard U.S. Deep supers are 9 11/16" tall.
Medium depth supers, around here anyway, are 6 5/8" tall.

There are supers called Illionois Deeps which are 7 3/4" tall (I believe).

Then there are shallow supers that are 5 11/16" or something like that.

If your deep supers are plugged out at 35 lbs of honey, then you must not be talking about 9 11/16" supers. Since it is not out of the question to get 50 to 60 lbs of honey out of a really well filled Deep super w/ 9 combs.


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## jean-marc

Mark:

I'm not saying they are plugged out. I'm saying they are filled. I thought they were 9 and 5/8 as opposed to 9 11/16. We're talking 1/16th of an inch. We just finished extracting 400 boxes that were well filled. We got 24 drums. That works out to 38 pounds per box. Then they were the cappings. Not sure what that weighed. Can those boxes hold more honey. Of course especially if you have 8 frames instead of 9. The main point is if you are getting say 45 pounds per box on average , those colonies missed out on honey.

We send bees away every year to canola pollination. We send them with an excluder and 2 honey supers. We band the individual pallets so the boxes stay on. We stack them 2 pallets high , tarp the load, say our prayers and wish them well. Another beekeeper unloads the bees then reloads them.One year we averaged 10 pounds (pretty sad) another year 90 and most years it's 60 or so. The year we averaged 90 pounds, we for sure missed out on honey. The frames were full and even the outside frames were capped over. The bees are using that nectar to make wax and that nectar is not being stored as honey. We should have had at least another box on, perhaps 2. We will never know. When we average 60 pounds, some hives may have missed some honey because they plug out, but for the most part there is still some room for storage not a whole bunch. Just to repeat myself , if you are getting more than 35 pounds of honey per deep super you, those colonies have missed out on some honey. Maybe you should weigh it for yourself, count boxes and so on , if you have never done it before. The numbers don't lie.

Jean-Marc


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## sqkcrk

Okay Jean-Marc, I thought that maybe something was lost in translation. You folks in canada do measure things w/ the metric system, right?


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## jim lyon

Jean-Marc obviously is quite certain of his numbers and I accept them for what he says. I do however think we arent exactly comparing the same situations, if I banded them up and sent them off with emptys on them I would certainly want to make sure they had enough room. What we do is entirely different, we put 2 to 3 mediums on just as the flow is beginning and shortly after finishing we make another round to even up and to put additional supers on as needed. In short we are making the most efficient use of our boxes because we only have enough for just over 3 mediums per hive. Occasionally we will have a few hives get ahead of us and plug out but it doesnt happen often (unfortunately). With that said I stand by the numbers I gave a few days ago that nicely full mediums routinely average 32 to 35 lbs. I have a warehouse full of extracted mediums and a large block of filled drums, it really isnt difficult math, the last time I checked it was just under 35. A deep being 1/2 again as large would put you at just over 50 lbs.


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## suttonbeeman

I aree with Mr. Lyon. If my deeps are fairly full but not plugged we are around 50...if plugged 55-58. If you run 8 frames in a 10 frame box you will usually get more. Med will hit around 35 lb with shallow 25 on ave.....if all are plugged then more, but seldom are all plugged. THis year in a really great flow with full deeps aansome plugged I'm at 54 lbs. But we got behind as we ran out of supers!


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## gregstahlman

:thumbsup:


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## Allen Martens

Jean-Marc is correct. Very standard to aim for 35 lbs per deep in the canadian prairies.


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## sqkcrk

So to get the tremendous crops that we hear about they must use more deeps than what other folks use?


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## jean-marc

I don't get those tremendous crops so I'm not fully qualified to explain, but the fellows would put 3-5 honey supers on a hive. The ones that talk about the very large honey crops own up to 7 honey supers per hive. They get pulled a minimum of 2 times. In a very good year they get pulled 3 times. The once a lifetime kinda crop might get pulled a fourth time. 

So what kinda crops are you hearing about Mark? 

Jean-Marc


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## Mike Snodgrass

Ive read where some folks are helping themselves get the larger crops by avoiding doing a split in the spring or even early summer. How are they manageing their bees and not watching swarms fly away by that point or soon after? I have heard of re-queening every fall as a way of avoiding haveing to split in the spring/early summer, but will that management technique avoid haveing to split at all? Thanks


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## Michael Palmer

Mike Snodgrass said:


> Ive read where some folks are helping themselves get the larger crops by avoiding doing a split in the spring or even early summer. How are they manageing their bees and not watching swarms fly away


By early supering, reversing brood chambers on Dandelion flow, and managing supers properly. Most colonies swarm because they don't have room above the active broodnest for upward expansion. Also, many beekeepers allow the broodnests to become plugged with honey because there weren't enough supers on to begin with. It seems to me that once the bees are gathering nectar and filling supers, the swarming impulse is greatly diminished. 

I say most colonies...not all. I feel that swarming is one way in which honeybee colonies requeen themselves. Is that not why colonies with young queens swarm much less frequently? So those colonies that persist in their swarming intentions should be requeened. This is where splitting helps. 

But why would a beekeeper split all the strong colonies at Dandelion when only a few will persist in swarming after proper broodnest and super management?


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## gregstahlman

LSPender said:


> Amazing how that calculates to abot 21 lbs per med. box.


we extract approximately 640 mediums per day which is around 30 barrels, sometimes more. this is on a consistant basis so let me see if i can calculate this. seems to be a 30lb ave on mediums. hmmmmmm:scratch: but i am really bad at math. good thing i'm a beekeeper


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## sqkcrk

I have heard it said, that in business, you should do what you are good at doing and pay someone else to do what you are not good at doing. I'm sure you have someone who does your "math" for you. 

You seem to be pretty good at math to me.


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## sqkcrk

NickNoyes, do your guys sort out the empty frames when they take the honey off? At about 22 lbs of honey per medium super, you must be bringing alot of empty frames into the honey house. But, maybe it's cheaper than sorting out in the field.


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## Beeslave

I've found that when you have a poor year with a bunch of partially filled supers it takes just as long to "extract" those partially filled frames as it does extracting Supers packed full(near). It's tough managing the amount of supers without having to many or not enough but when it is done right extracting sure is more time efficient for the amount of honey drummed up.


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## gregstahlman

i'm not saying a medium can't ave. 21lbs. i have seen it on a few slow years. but i have seen alot more full mediums that average 30-35lbs than i have lighter ones


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## Keith Jarrett

gregstahlman said:


> i'm not saying a medium can't ave. 21lbs


I was going to beehave myself here,BUT, Greg, what us poor folk out here in Calif have is a honey flow that's more than 21 pounds.

Heck, I know they can hold 30 plus pounds, but we have a hell of a time getting the flow to last that long. lol


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## Nick Noyes

Mark
We don't sort frames out in the field. We are stripping them now so everything comes in. Basically if its over 1/4 full it gets ran through the machine. This how we do it. I am in no way implying that this is the right way.
Mediums can easily hold 35lbs. of honey we run a lot of them that full. Unfortunitly they can also hold 10 lbs and we sometimes run a lot of them also.
My advice to all is. Don't get mad at that guy that tells you his mediums hold 35 lbs. of honey. Try to figure out how he is getting the 35lbs. of honey into the box. Getting it into the box is the hard part, getting it out is the easy part.


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## Fuzzy

"Ive read where some folks are helping themselves get the larger crops by avoiding doing a split in the spring or even early summer. How are they manageing their bees and not watching swarms fly away by that point or soon after?"

Mike, Mr Palmer pretty much said it all. I don't split... NEVER. I manage the space until the heavy flows are over. Then they may swarm and I don't care. In fact then I will go into late fall with nice new queens for next season. 

Fuzzy


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## sqkcrk

Nick,
I thought that was what you were doing. And it makes sense. Do you run all of the frames through the extractor? If it is too costly to sort them in the field, I can see how it could be too costly to sort them in the honeyhouse too. If you are running a Cowen type system, auto deboxer and such, I can imagine that you never actually handle the individual frames by hand. Is that right?

I pay someone to extract my honey for me, on contract, not an employee. So, if I take empty frames to them, they don't like it. They don't like handling empty equipment when they are paid by the bucket of honey. When you have your own system, you can pay employees to do what you want them to. And run things the way you find the best.


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## jmgi

>Don't get mad at that guy that tells you his mediums hold 35 lbs. of honey. Try to figure out how he is getting the 35lbs. of honey into the box. Getting it into the box is the hard part, getting it out is the easy part. 

Words to live by. :thumbsup:


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## KQ6AR

As far as getting 180# of a hive, remember you're probably leaving 100#+ for them to have for winter. Selling 100# retail buys a lot of package bees.

If I took all the honey in the fall, & sold the bees. There would easily be 150#+ coming out of each hive in a season.


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## The Honey Householder

KQ6AR said:


> As far as getting 180# of a hive, remember you're probably leaving 100#+ for them to have for winter. Selling 100# retail buys a lot of package bees.
> 
> If I took all the honey in the fall, & sold the bees. There would easily be 150#+ coming out of each hive in a season.


Taking all the honey and selling the bees sounds like a great idea. I have a 125+ lb. APH over the pass 5 years running the bees that way.With the price of honey up to $3500+ a ton. Why would you let the bees eat it? Feed them something else.


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## KQ6AR

Hi Honey Householder,

I understand you're business plan, & it does make sense. Personally I'm in it more for the experience, & the bees. Not a business for me, the honey is a sticky byproduct of my hobby. My wife does well selling it @ $10/lb. So I guess I'll keep extracting it.

Good Luck with you're new honey house project,
Dan


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## Ian

>>The main point is if you are getting say 45 pounds per box on average , those colonies missed out on honey.

I agree totally. When we get our summer flows, those bees bring in honey quick. Give them the space, they will fill it. Dont give them the space, they will plug it. When I see honey packed in between the boxes, I have missed out. 
We average 35 lbs per box. And like I say, my plugged hives average better than 40


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## Stubocheck

surely you don't take the stuff from the bee's food... they would die then you have to buy all new bees.


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## Stubocheck

KQ6AR said:


> As far as getting 180# of a hive, remember you're probably leaving 100#+ for them to have for winter. Selling 100# retail buys a lot of package bees.
> 
> If I took all the honey in the fall, & sold the bees. There would easily be 150#+ coming out of each hive in a season.


Please explain this 'selling bees' method. I only imagine extracting stores of 'just honey' frames from brood boxes and selling frames of brood and the queen in nuc boxes. Is that part of it? It sounds very lucrative and 'tasty'.:banana:


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## johno

This thread is so old, most of the writers have probably succumbed to old age.
Johno


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## jim lyon

Hmmm. Just scanned through this "oldie but goodie" and they are mostly folks that still post on here with some regularity (including yours truly).


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## nostradamus

Ok, first post here, been reading on this and other north american bee forums, blogs etc for a few years now.. And one thing that strikes me that are not mentioned much is the importance of breeding queens.. 

In the last 10 years or so I got around 260 pound average in lat 60 Sweden increasing around 2-4% yearly, 2-3% winter loss (varroa but no TM, acid treatment only, no afb), less than 1% swarms out of 50-400 colonies, no spring splits or other "swarm preventing work". 
the time i spend breeding and raising queens is minimal compared what it took checking for queen cells, splitting in spring and summer. The labor and oil cost is more than double here compared to US and CA but so is honey (~5,4 USD/kg). 

Point is, good queens are key to everything.. location is important of course but if 30% of your stock is in bad condition after winter another 30% splitted due to swarm preventing, that kinda sucks.


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## jim lyon

Welcome to the forum Nostradamus. Sounds like you have a pretty successful beekeeping program established. Yes, queens are important but to get 200+ crops requires lots of good forage. Also, lots of different ways to calculate averages. Some only consider part of their hives as production hives. In our beekeeping model we expect all of our hives to produce surplus honey. I have always figured lbs. per location is a better benchmark than lbs. per hive.


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## squarepeg

welcome to the forum nostradamus, and congratulations on those excellent harvests.

can you please share more about your swarm preventing work?


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## Ian

Big crops are like building a house of cards , all the cards need to stand for it to work out. So many factors, one being timely hive growth but more importantly abundant nectar dripping flowers


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## sqkcrk

You can be prepared and do your bee work and end up with a crappy crop and you can be lackadazical at your beekeeping and end up with a great crop. Every year is different. This year, even with my laid back management style we are having a good crop. 120 lbs from some hives and heavy brood nests. That's good for me and around here.

Nothing beats a nectar flow. a strong nectar flow cures a lot of things.


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## johno

Just kidding about the age of the thread Jim, but it looks like we raised the dead. The best that I have got from a hive in my area is about 60 lbs, we have a short spring flow and then it is over for the year I wish I could see some of the 125lb harvests.
Johno


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## jim lyon

We take the time to mark our most productive hives each year and use those as a major criteria for selecting breeder queens. Truth is, though, I'm not convinced that there is a whole lot of difference in nectar gathering ability regardless of what color or breed the bee is. The key component is how many foragers are in the hive at the beginning of a surplus flow. I would maintain the best predictor of a hives ability to raise a large honey crop is to count the total frames of brood a month ahead of a projected honey flow.


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## squarepeg

jim lyon said:


> I would maintain the best predictor of a hives ability to raise a large honey crop is to count the total frames of brood a month ahead of a projected honey flow.


this was borne out in my yards this year jim. what my bottom 33% of producers had in common were queen issues (2 failed supercedures, 1 successful supercedure, and 1 swarm) during the latter part of the spring build up and preceding the main flow.


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## odfrank

It sure was easier in the '70s and '80s. No mites, few viruses, Jumbo frames, big brood chambers.


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## nostradamus

Well.. idealy (we don't have more hours on the day over here  top 2-4% of the queens(honey yield) are held, when they are 3 year old, with only 2 supers allowing then to plug it all with honey during swarm season .. the ones who don't swarm and clean out dead brood when do a freezing test. 

The queens that pass the test are inseminated with their own drones once and then inseminated between two lines of the second generation.. 
Half for the drone colonies and half for the queen rearing are mated in an remote aria. 

No other swarm prevention than breeding...


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## The Honey Householder

johno said:


> This thread is so old, most of the writers have probably succumbed to old age.
> Johno



This tread is so old that we don't shake and sell many bees any more. We sell the bees off in fall double 5 nucs now. 

Still living and making a better living with honey production. Crop has been produced, bees have been sold and honey is almost all sold ($200 a bucket). Life is good beeing a honey producer.


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## Joel

The most overlooked factor we see is Beekeepers not feeding their bees the appropriate diet through winter and into spring. None of us would think of letting any other stock starve all winter but somehow we miss this with bee culture. I'm not talking about brand name winter patties that lack a great deal of necessary needs, not talking about sugar boards that are survival food. That's like eating at Mac Donalds all winter and expecting to be fit in the spring. We feed November through Feb. on our South Carolina stock and we feed heavy in October and November in New York and then again from Mid February through the end of April for our New York Stock. We developed our own patties after years of work and research and the difference in what we have on March 1st compared to 4 years ago is astounding. Laurie has a good recipe on here but it is still lacking in some very important aspects as Keith Jarrett has pointed out. Too often bees end up using the spring flow to build up for the summer and fall flow. That is 75 lbs per hive lost in our area just from this one factor. Going into May in NY with well fed mega hives means we get the early locust bloom, a heavy may Russian olive bloom and often are pulling our 1st honey the end of June. We also run two queen units, similar to what is described in the "Hive and the Honey bee" with some modifications we've made over 19 years of using this system. Hives with young fall queens or spring queens of the current season also contributes a great deal. We also pull honey and replace supers after each major flow, June 30 for flows mentioned, July 25 for Basswood and then the end of August through the last week of Sept. for the late summer main flow. Bees move into and fill wet supers much faster than dry supers. When we have new comb to add we paint a light coating of (our own for disease safety) beeswax in a couple of quick stripes over the beeswax coated plasticell we use. Bees draw this out much faster. All our supers are off before the end of Sept. to avoid the Aster flow. We run queen excluders and single deeps once the two queen units are combined with an entrance for field workers above the queen excluder. One other mention is Paul Brown, a beekeeper in North Carolina in the 1908's. Paul was pulling state inspector confirmed crops of 400 lbs a hive by catching swarms and continually combining them with hives to make a kind of instant two queen unit. If you haven't seen them, look up Keith Jarrets Nutra bee video, we did, developed a complete food and like his, our hives that look like that in spring will in any good season give us 150-200 lbs per hive in an area that supports bees well.


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## svtkpr

Why do you avoid the aster flow since they one of the few plants still bloom after the first frost?


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## jean-marc

Good points Joel. I agree there is a lot to be said for feeding bees. You definitely want the population to collect the early flow as opposed to be growing on that flow. I have yet to produce a 200 pound crop so I may not be the best advice giver on this topic.

Jean-Marc


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## aunt betty

I got a 150# crop from an 8-frame nuc I bought in May. How? I gave them nothing but drawn combs. Made it easy on them. That's how you get a lot of honey plus it has to be a fantastic year like this spring was.


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## Hogback Honey

Like one person said move to the Dakotas


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## Harley Craig

if you have Facebook, this group is worth following if you want to learn more. Several guys getting crazy ammounts of honey and feed zero sugar 

https://www.facebook.com/groups/iveshives.peacebees/


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## hpm08161947

Harley Craig said:


> if you have Facebook, this group is worth following if you want to learn more. Several guys getting crazy ammounts of honey and feed zero sugar
> 
> https://www.facebook.com/groups/iveshives.peacebees/


Ahh yes... that would be "Tim Ives" - he and his techniques have been much discussed on here.


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## Joel

svtkpr said:


> Why do you avoid the aster flow since they one of the few plants still bloom after the first frost?


We are a direct to customer retail sales in 17 NYC markets. The Aster honey crystallizes so fast and with big undesirable crystals so we avoid it. It is poor winter bee food as well due to solids it is hard to digest and can cause dysentery in mid winter. We run single deeps with queen excluders so our outside brood chamber frames are packed with good honey by late summer and the aster ends up in the brood nest and the bees have most of it used up by the beginning of December.


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## Michael Bush

It's easy. You put them in the middle of 8,000 acres of sweet clover...


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## suttonbeeman

Michael Bush said:


> It's easy. You put them in the middle of 8,000 acres of sweet clover...


Now,Michael I would be disappointed with "only" 200 lbs in the middle of 8k acres,of sweet clover. Happy with 350 to 400. Lol


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## irwin harlton

Doesn't matter how much bloom you got out there, if you don 't have the weather and the bee population 
, you are not going to get a bumper crop, this summer, wind,stifling hot humid weather that put plants under stress and eliminated a nectar flow to a trickle, cut my crop and a lot of others in western Canada


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## Phoebee

Some stats turned up recently for Virginia, which says the official state records put average production yield per hive here at something like 35 pounds.

http://www.usda.gov/nass/PUBS/TODAYRPT/hony0315.txt

But a fellow club member had us out for a public outreach day where he has some of his hives. He says he's getting about 200 pounds per hive. He's right in the middle of a farm that does "pick your own vegetables", at the moment pumpkins, but strawberries are in the ground for next spring. Acres and acres of that kind of crop would seem to make a difference.


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## sqkcrk

Not near as much as what naturally grows in the vacinity.


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## Ian

irwin harlton said:


> , this summer, stifling hot humid weather a


That pretty much sums up this summers production woes
Cut nectar production, exaggerated swarming


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## snl

In SC and in the vicinity in which I have bees, I'd have to put 2 buckets of honey on top of the hive!


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## irwin harlton

What is the effect of smoke in the air,environment, from Forrest fires, on honey production, noticed that it was listed in the ABJ as a cause of a shorter crop in the mid US http://www.weather.com/news/news/midwest-smoke-from-canadian-wildfires-jun2015


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## Ian

I actually thought it helped honey production, incredibly hot weather was shielded by the smoke saving the crops from scorching. I had a very strong flow during that time, crop withered after the smoke left as did the late flows


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