# Why such difference in honey stores?



## Calbee (Sep 26, 2011)

I have two hives that started as swarms of this year. They are located about 3 miles apart, both in established and irrigated areas of the town. To my surprise, I was able today to pull five frames of honey from one and not a single one from the other. In fact "the other" is located in a even better location, started as a much bigger swarm and does well even at this time. It is two deeps pretty full of bees as I write, is healthy, brings in lots of pollen. I don't thing they got robbed by other bees since this is populous colony. Could anyone explain this lack of honey stores? I have to feed them now. They have no honey stores at all. How could one explain the difference between the two given that they both started last Spring as swarms and have similar quantities of resources to forage on? Thanks a lot.


----------



## Riverderwent (May 23, 2013)

Calbee said:


> Could anyone explain this lack of honey stores?


Brood rearing uses up honey. Some strains of bees are prone to raise more brood in the fall than other strains. They may raise brood without regard to the resources available in the hive. That depletes the honey. That may also account for the fact that you see lots of bees and little honey.

With colonies that produce a large number young bees it may also be harder to take note of the reduction of population caused by swarming. Swarming bees take up a lot of honey before leaving the hive.


----------



## Calbee (Sep 26, 2011)

Thanks David. You have a good point here. I can see they raise brood. That is fine. We need winter bees. However, I wonder whether they have a clue that winter is coming. They have practically no stores.


----------



## Goat Man (Nov 23, 2011)

Around here, Missouri, our colonies need at least 14 frames of stores to get them through the winter.
It sounds to me like you shouldn,t have taken any honey from either of your hives.
Your only choice now, in my opinion, is feed, feed, feed. If they don't have any stores now expect to feed 5 gallons
or more syrup to them by winter. Unless you don't have winter in your area.


----------



## ruthiesbees (Aug 27, 2013)

I have multiple bee boxes in my yard and two have pollen traps on them. This spring I was surprised to see how different the pollen in the 2 traps were. I thought the bees all foraged on the same thing, but apparently different colonies can go to different plants based on what the scout bees find. You are seeing first hand the effects of this. I hope you gave the 5 pulled frames to the weaker colony. That's called "balancing the stores" and I do that every fall so my colonies have at least some real honey to feed on which is healthier than sugar stores. I do use sugar bricks in late December and they eat those first before getting into the capped honey in Jan/Feb, which is when they are starting to build up the brood rearing.


----------



## gww (Feb 14, 2015)

I am new so keep this in mind. I had two swarms that seemed bee wise to be simular. One in a two or three week period drew out aprox 60% of a medium super on golden rod. The other not so much. When I mentioned the differrance to someone with more experiance he said that one of the hives may have had more robbing pressure keeping the foragers at home. 
Just another ideal thrown out there.
gww


----------

