All three of my hives have not gained any weight since late spring - this despite a nice, wet, spring, and a balanced summer (not too hot, not too dry) and big blooms of black locust and more recently, a three week rolling bloom of linden. All of the hives seem busy and healthy with lots of pollen coming in. Two of the hives are the halves of an overwintered nuc that I split in June, and while doing well seem to be building slowly (one got the queen, the other raised their own queen). The third is a strong overwintered hive that superceded its queen in May. This hive I would have expected to put on some honey since they had the lull in brood rearing and so no mouths to feed all that time. Usually at this time of year I would have two supers on the big hive, which would be mostly full and ready to extract. ANyone else in the northeast with similar or different experience this year?
Even though you had blooms, were they yielding nectar? We can have Eucalypt blooms that don't yield much or nothing.
I would be looking at the trees , maybe not the bees.
With the wet spring that we had and the intensity of the blooms and the mild summer, I would certainly have guessed that we would have a banner year!
I made about half the honey I did last year. We have had a record setting rainfall this year - over 60 inches at my place. I remember reading that rain will wash the nectar/pollen out of a bloom. Yes, for a number of days it rained every day. I don't know if that fact, fiction, or folklore.
I MENTIONED THIS IN ANOTHER THREAD, ALL MY HIVES HAVE BROOD, HONEY AND BEE BREAD IN EVERY FRAME, FIRST TIME I HAVE SEEN THIS, LOTS OF BEES, SO ITS NOT ALL BLEAK.
Oooohhh my ears (lol) I still made about 53 gallons.
GSF, I believe the washing out of nectar by rain is true, try working bees the day after serious rain.
You have to wait for new flowers to open for the bees to start gathering again. Last season our bees spent 4 weeks on canola for no honey harvested, rains for 2-3 days followed by 2-3 days of sunshine, If the bees gathered anything in the sunny days they ate it on the rainy days.