Honey Production

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    Honey bees produce honey.   In order to harvest a good honey crop you must have:

Introduction:

This is a good time to be talking about honey production because we just finished the poorest honey season in many beekeeper's recent memory.   It had nothing to do with the strength of colonies, management techniques, equipment or anything else except for one thing -- weather and growing conditions for nectar producing plants.

If one beekeeper had a poor honey production year and all other beekeepers have good honey production, the problem could be laid at the door step of the beekeeper with the poor honey crop but this was a year that all most all beekeepers reported a shortage of honey in the supers and some even report that the bees have very little winter stores.

This is the reality of keeping bees.  I do a lot of reading and found the following from a beekeeper who kept bees in England in the early part of the 19th century.  "The season, however, it is well-known, was so wet as to be very unfavourable for bees: -- the summer of 1830 was not by any means what is called a Bee-year; and early in the autumn I could see that, instead of adding to their store, they were under the necessity of living upon it."
From Humanity to Honey Bees: or, Practical Directions for the Management of Honey Bees by Thomas Nutt. 1832

This is the reality that all beekeepers live with.  Those who spend their honey crop before it is taken in by the bees can expect to be very disappointed in keeping bees.  You can find in the literature of bee hives collecting several hundred pounds of honey in a season and those reports are correct.  But keep in mind that location and weather conditions have a large bearing on what the bees are able to gather and store.

Instruction on how to get good honey crops are found in most beekeeping text.   However, I am going to present you with my ideas and they may or may not agree with what others tell you.  Since we all develop a particular beekeeping style, we tend to be very protective of the way we keep bees.  Do not hesitate to try something if you feel it will work but if it doesn't work for you, then seek a method that will work.  The modern day beekeeper is struggling with a number of issues.  They are asking questions even of themselves -- questioning their own techniques  and why?  Because today's beekeeper faces heavy bee losses from mites and other diseases.  One of the topics found at bee meetings today is: IPM  (Insect pest management).   No longer are beekeepers able to point to a constant 10 % loss over winter.  Some of them are looking at 50% or more and they are the ones doing everything they can to prevent heavy losses -- medicating the bees etc.

Bees come first

Rather than discussing getting enthusiastic about bees or when one should start with bees or where to find bees, I am going to assume that if you have reached the Beekeeping level 301 and you have already gone thru those steps.   Another thing you will often find in bee books is the amount of money one can make with bees.  Our goal is to present facts, management techniques, and little else.  Honey is a commodity that can easily be sold.  A honey producer has a number of choices on marketing his/her honey and they are discussed in another section of this lesson.

Fact:  Success depends on:

 

Honey Bee Management for Honey Production

 

From the earliest days of honey bee management for honey production in hives, beekeepers have struggled with the issue of preventing swarms, placing box (supers) on the hive at the proper time -- including the placement of windows in the side of boxes to watch the development of the comb and check progress of bees, and preventing robbing of weak hives.  There are a number of individual practices that go into the management of bees for honey production and all are important.

Each of the following topics are important: