Harvesting, too late?

[Andy M.]

Hi all,

How late is too late to harvest? Would it be OK if I did it now? I had a really busy Summer and finally am at the point where I can do some harvesting. 

Also do I harvest all the honey in the medium supers, bringing my hives back down to single deeps, then put an empty medium on each hive or leave a full medium on for winter? 

Thoughts?

Andy

[John Thompson]

No, it's not too late. In fact, I'm looking to see if I can get another harvest at the end of August, since the goldenrod hasn't bloomed yet (The buds are there). 

Typically, you harvest the capped frames. If I have any partial frames at final harvest, I'll scratch them and leave them out for the bees to clean out. I remove all mediums for winter, and leave them 2 deeps, and put a feeder on top. Later in the year, I'll replace the feeder with a shim of sugar cakes, and a quilt box on top of that. 

If you want to over winter with a single deep, someone else here will give you some tips. I don't have experience with that. 

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[Greg V]

I harvest year around. Does not really matter, unless you are into honey sales. These are all artificial timeframes.

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[marvin]

There's no real hard and fast rules.  Some things to consider:  Depending on how you harvest, extracting in warmer weather is a bit more efficient due to the lower viscosity of warmer honey.  But if you're not all capped, then waiting a while might help on that account.  Another consideration is that once robbing season hits (and that might be soon), the bees are a whole lot meaner when you go to pull the supers.  It can be really brutal sometimes.  That might be a real incentive to do it now.  

What John said about 2 deeps and feeding is kind of the standard practice up here.  If you don't want to feed, or have a lot of uncapped frames, or if the deeps are light, then leaving a super on is good too.  

[Greg V]

And if you are a non-traditional beek, little of the Lang lingo matters.

On Mon, Aug 10, 2020, 12:57 PM marvin <marvin...@gmail.com> wrote:

There's no real hard and fast rules.  Some things to consider:  Depending on how you harvest, extracting in warmer weather is a bit more efficient due to the lower viscosity of warmer honey.  But if you're not all capped, then waiting a while might help on that account.  Another consideration is that once robbing season hits (and that might be soon), the bees are a whole lot meaner when you go to pull the supers.  It can be really brutal sometimes.  That might be a real incentive to do it now.  

What John said about 2 deeps and feeding is kind of the standard practice up here.  If you don't want to feed, or have a lot of uncapped frames, or if the deeps are light, then leaving a super on is good too.  

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[Greg V]

Also removal of the honey frames <> harvest.

I am never in a hurry to actually harvest, i.e. extract the honey from the frame (because you can not undo this).

You can always plug in unextracted honey frames where they are needed by the bees (vs. the extracted frames).

Still have some un-extracted frames from the last year sitting in reserve.

As far as warming the frames for extraction, there are many ways of doing that at any time of the year.

Easiest - let them sit in a car for a day - that gets them plenty warm even in fall months (or in spring).

So if not pursuing significant honey volumes and/or hard deadlines, there is plenty of flexibility.

[marvin]

Greg is right:  there is a lot of flexibility.  But be careful.  Nothing draws in robbers, or stimulates a perfectly nice hive to resort to robbing like the smell of honey in a beeyard.  And the time when its worse usually begins around Aug 15 and can continue until cold weather sets in.  Lotta slop on the date, but it's soon.  So you don't want to playing around anymore than needed.  Get the job done, do it cleanly, and close down your entrances.  

[Jeff Steinhauer]

Hey Greg,
I put my honey tub in the car the other day, because I "extracted" it in April.  It sat in the tub long enough to crystallize.  So Friday I put it into my car for a few hours over the day.  Now my car smells like honey.
I put all the wax cappings out for the bees to clean up.

[Greg V]

The honey smell is fine with me. It is temporary too. Robbing is actually an issue as we speak. One of my backyard hives will rob you clean today, they are so robbing-prone. So should take precautions anyway.

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[Joseph Bessetti]

I had one trying to rob another several days ago.  I moved the robber over 6 feet and put the target of the robbers on that spot.  All the robbing bees end up return to the hive they were trying to rob.  Problem solved.  The colony is no longer weak so it cannot be exploited.  

This robbing colony wasn't particularly strong.  It was a recent split, short on stores, and raising a lot of brood.  The parent colony is super strong but never showed any robbing tendencies, but it's also loaded with honey of its own.   That was the only colony that was participating in the plunder even though there are 30 more right there and a dozen more in the neighborhood.  It is interesting that a colony can target another so efficiently just 12 feet away given that some claim they can't communicate location of a food source less than about 30 meters away.  

I have seen enough evidence to feel confident that this tendency is at least partially genetic.  Robbing behavior has been selected for in the commercial industry for decades.  The queens from the colonies that make the biggest honey crops are bred.  The colony that robs others has the advantage and is often the biggest producer.  One must be careful what they measure when selecting honeybee genetics or they may not end up with what they hoped for.  I have seen this play out like this several years now.  I almost want to have a weak hive on purpose just to find out which one or two try to take advantage.  These are poor bloodlines that need to be re-queened. 

Joe

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From: mad...@googlegroups.com <mad...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Greg V <voro...@gmail.com>
Sent: Monday, August 10, 2020 7:05 PM
To: mad...@googlegroups.com <mad...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [madbees] Harvesting, too late?

 

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[Jimmer Yunek]

How can you tell which hive is the robbers?  A direct line to their hive and the one being robbed?

Jimmer

608-279-5542

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[Jeff Steinhauer]

Jimmer,
I think the answer is to install a Nest video door bell on the hives.  ;)

Cheers,

Jeff S.

[Greg V]

Which one is a robber?

The bees that prefer honey residue over available nectar will tend to rob others.

If some bees tend to forage very early and very late - be aware (they are likely cleaning out some hive somewhere).

I normally don't put honey-soken wax residue out (after crush-and-strain).

Well, I have done it recently to bake out the wax moth setting in.

Very quickly one particular hive zeroed in on the residue and it was a stampede.

The other two hives ignored the wax.

Was easy to identify - the robbers-to-be are lite Italian-type bees; there other two are dark Carni-type bees.

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[Greg V]

Regarding: "some claim they can't communicate the location of a food source less than about 30 meters away."

For some time now I believed this.

Until I set up a drinking bassein for the bees less than 10 meters away and they routinely use it and clearly recruit the others too.

What I observe is that the bees do not fly directly from the hive to the water and back.

They fly UP, make 1-2 circles to orient, then land onto the target - even though the direct flight path is much shorter.

So by flying up and taking a remote look from above they are able to orient onto the objects located very close to their base.

The same behavior I observed when the "robbers-to-be" zeroed onto the wax residue at about 10 meters away.

They don't fly directly (much closer), but rather up - then set the course - then drop down (this takes about 2-3x the distance to work against very close targets). But they clearly do it.