I have 3 hives. 2 of them have 3 supers on. 1 has 5. These are 6 5/8 supers, 10 frame. Top boxes are filling up fast. And we have 2 more days of this heat coming. Anybody else have any hives really doing good. Just curious. We just are at the end of a tremendous basswood season. Have goldenrod and sweet clover to go now. Lets hear from you. Harold
In my area my hives consume a lot of honey in August and September building up for winter. It is hard to tell what the net output will be at this time.
As I noted in another recent thread, despite a great linden (basswood) and black locust season this year, my hives have been light all season - almost nothing in the one super that is on!
We had a great spring flow and things leveled out over the summer. Going into a dearth in a week or so before the goldenrod. Fall flow will depend on rain. Fingers crossed.
I just removed the supers off 2 of my 4 hives, because the bees are slow to even fill the brood boxes and haven't really done anything in the supers. In their defense, they were swarms caught in May.
tycrnp Why dont your bees want to corporate? Must be something wrong. It surely is warm enough there isnt it? Curious.
It is PLENTY warm enough here....that's for certain! 3 of my 4 hives were swarms that we caught in May. All 3 of the swarms had to be re-queened and we just did that in late May.
1 is doing great, 1 is doing fair, and the 3rd had laying workers - it is the weakest, but I think we are on track now. All 3 of the swarm hives are building out comb and there is lots of BIAS. I think we just got a late start.
I have a 6th super on a couple, a few with five, and lots of them with 2 or 3.
Clover is about done, so I will be pulling them pretty quick. I always take mine after the clover, before the goldenrod and wild sunflowers really come in, and I leave that stuff for the bees to winter with.
Looks like you are doing good there splitrock. Thats what we are going to do. Figure on pulling probably next week so they can get ready for a Minnesota winter. Do you winter there or in California?
I winter mine here, 80 hives aren't enough to take very far.
You do anything special for them? Do you usually lose many?