extracting honey before the flow

backyard warrior · January 01, 2011, 10:31:30 PM

Hope everyone is doing great my questions are what do you do with sugar honey in the frames that was fed to build comb in the supers. I want to remove this honey so my bees will start storing nectar in them this spring. What can i use this extracted sugar honey for they say sugar water is better than feeding them honey. Also i have 2 deeps that i over winter my bees in do any of you extract the honey in the deeps to allow more room for brood rearing ???

hardwood · January 01, 2011, 10:40:05 PM

Who said that sugar water is better than their own honey??

Scott

AllenF · January 01, 2011, 10:42:48 PM

I have been drinking so bear with me. You have 2 deeps. You fed them syrup. In the spring you will be putting honey supers on for the bees to store honey in. This is what you extract (or cut out). The syrup in the brood boxes will be mostly gone come spring and they will eat it up feeding young in the spring. I really have never seen a hive at the start of spring that was honey bound until the honey flow started and supers were not put on the hive.

rdy-b · January 01, 2011, 10:53:18 PM

if you are saying that you have suppers that have sryup in them because you were trying to get them drawn out and you want to clear them --then place them UNDER the brood boxes with excluder on top and they will clear them-RDY-B

Kathyp · January 01, 2011, 11:08:42 PM

not sure whether you are saying you left supers on and they have syrup in them, or you have them stored with syrup in them?

as for the deeps, don't worry. they are more apt to use all the honey and need feeding by spring than to not have enough room for the queen to lay. honey bound is easy to fix. just pull the full frames and replace with empty. feed the full frames back later. definitely not something you need to worry about right now.

if you have syrup in honey supers and they are on, you have a potential problem. the queen is going to move up to lay and you are going to have brood in your honey supers. if the honey supers are not on, but stored, just put them out to be robbed clean in the spring.

at any rate, none of that is anything you can do fix right now. for now just leave them as they are and as you get closer to spring you can re-evaluate what's happening in your hives. then you can make a plan.

backyard warrior · January 02, 2011, 10:04:56 AM

I have read that the sugar syrup is better for the bees then their own honey because the sugar doesnt have the impurties in it like the wild flower honey that they make on their own. This could be debated for ever but it sounds reasonable maybe you guys could tell me why it wouldnt be id like to hear opinions.

backyard warrior · January 02, 2011, 10:29:42 AM

I just read about the ph levels that differ from honey and sugar on bushs site makes sense. If we let the bees do their own thing like nature intended we wouldnt have all these issues we are having today the way it seems.

Kathyp · January 02, 2011, 11:38:43 AM

very rarely can we improve on nature. ;)

did you want to clarify your set up for a better answer to your original question?

rdy-b · January 02, 2011, 06:21:15 PM

Quote from: backyard warrior on January 02, 2011, 10:04:56 AM
I have read that the sugar syrup is better for the bees then their own honey because the sugar doesn't have the impurities in it like the wild flower honey that they make on their own. This could be debated for ever but it sounds reasonable maybe you guys could tell me why it wouldn't be id like to hear opinions.

yes we had a discussion on this board about wintering bees on syrup vs honey-some honeys are not the best to winter on-everyones consensus at the time was the clearer the feed the easier it would be for the bees to winter on-
round and round it goes -if you dont have a problem with wintering the bees on your local honey -i wouldn't worry about trying to fix it- :) RDY-B
http://forum.beemaster.com/index.php/topic,29829.msg236496.html#msg236496

backyard warrior · January 02, 2011, 08:06:16 PM

Kathyp i cant remember if it was you that was using natural comb in your hives is it you that is doing that like bushs site says ???

Kathyp · January 03, 2011, 12:08:28 AM

i'm not sure exactly what his site says, but yes, i let them draw their own...for the most part. on occasion i use some wax foundation. comes in handy for getting them started straight and sometimes i use it in honey supers. depends on how lazy i am when it's time to drag stuff out. :-D

T Beek · January 03, 2011, 09:19:57 AM

Quote from: kathyp on January 02, 2011, 11:38:43 AM
very rarely can we improve on nature. ;)

OK, I'll bite, how do we improve on nature, ever?

thomas
did you want to clarify your set up for a better answer to your original question?

I think the question needs clarification. HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!

thomas

T Beek · January 03, 2011, 03:17:13 PM

alright you caught me, I'm a ludite, thru n thru. If you folks weren't talking about beekeeping I wouldn't be on this thing :-D.

OK, answer the Q now.

thomas