As I understand their are two flows, summer and fall. I need to move my hives and would like to lighten the load by harvesting at the end of July / first week of Aug. Am I correct in thinking that I can harvest in eary Aug. without upseting the flow?
thanks
QuoteAm I correct in thinking that I can harvest in early Aug. without upsetting the flow?
In NY the answer would be yes. You can harvest then,but let them keep the fall honey,because you cant have both. If you keep the spring and the fall honey you lose your bees. After August I would let them pack all the honey they can in two deeps or three mediums with no additional supers on. After harvesting the early honey, it is a good time to treat for mites.
Here in the PNW we generally have mild falls and often experience a light honey flow after labor day so I've gotten into the habit of picking labor day weekend for my harvest time. It is also not uncommon to have 3,4,or more honey flows during the spring and summer as various fruits and crops come on line.
Being so close to you thats music to my ears brian.... :D this is turning out to be a great year for the PNW, i've already extracted what my instructor said would be my total yield for the year and we still have august!....
I moved my last hives from cottage yard yesterday. Hives got quite much raspberry honey. Now I moved hives to canola fields. After 2 weeks I move some hives back to my yard because I have late sown canola around my cottage. Seven hectares per one hive - is that nice!
Part of hives I brought to canola field where fireweed became in blossom after canola.
What is main flow? - It depends where you keep your bees. I selected canola fields which seemed to be most robust. It is same with foreweed: what kind of pasture and how old?
This is difficult job even after all these years.
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My hives are in a local orchard and veg. farm/stand,... tomatos, squash, pumpkin and corn are planted. Tomatos are starting to bloom, squash and pumpkin are not too far behind I suppose. The corn isn't up yet. What kind of flow can I expect from these vegies?
my bees covered up my squash!
What size shovels did they use? Bees also flock to cucumbers which is one of the honey flows on the Skagit River flats.