Honey Yields

[jeanne hansen]

I'm sorry I am not as diplomatic a person as some in our group, and I'm VERY sorry I have such a jealous streak. But there is an easy compromise solution here.

Someone, possibly Mike Gourlie, can float a message on madbees stating that they are doing a harvest survey, and request everyone to report their yield to them. Then they can send a chart to each respondent, so they see who harvested how much honey.

Additionally, they can add up all the amounts and report to the club the total pounds of honey added to the economy, and the average harvest per beekeeper or per hive.

Then it isn't bragging on anyone's part. Then I don't have to be jealous.

Thanks!
Jeanne Hansen
824 Jacobson Ave
Madison, WI 53714
608-244-5094

--------------------------------------------
On Tue, 11/17/15, Paul Zelenski <paulze...@gmail.com> wrote:

Subject: Re: [madbees] Re: Landmiines - Yikes!
To: mad...@googlegroups.com
Date: Tuesday, November 17, 2015, 10:04 AM

We
discuss this each year and I think we ultimately come to the
same conclusion. There are a few people who don't want
to hear about honey production, but the majority does. If
you are going to tell us your production, please put
something in the title so those who don't want to hear
can avoid it. 
On Nov 17,
2015, at 9:14 AM, Diane Packett <dlpa...@gmail.com>
wrote:

 What Michael said! I
also am curious about others' honey production, and I
don't know why it should be any more taboo than
others' overwinter hive survival. On the other hand,
maybe discussions discussions of journal articles should be
kept entirely "academic", since people get so
emotional when they find out others are doing things they
think are harmful. If people can manage that.
 Diane



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[Mary R Williams]

Jeanne,

Thanks for the chuckle. One of the things I appreciate about you is your candor. And, I appreciate that you try to find ways to accommodate personal preferences.

Thanks,
Mary Rose

________________________________________
From: mad...@googlegroups.com <mad...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of 'jeanne hansen' via madbees <mad...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Tuesday, November 17, 2015 10:47 AM
To: mad...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [madbees] Honey Yields

[Michael Gourlie]

There's all sorts of workarounds to this type of thing, but with a stubborn streak and a candor equal to Jeanne's, my recommendation would be to solve this problem at its source -- rather than require everyone else to figure out a workaround for personal problems, those with jealousy streaks should figure out some way to deal with it so that others can share successes and failures and any insights they might have into those successes and failures. I consider myself among those with jealousy streaks, but I will not allow that jealousy to interfere with my desire to learn from others.

Here is my answer to my jealousy problems -- write about what happened to me and why:
Successes:
I had my best year in honey production with 300 lbs produced by my six back yard hives for distribution. That's an average of only 50 lbs per hive which by most measures is mediocre, but is the best average production per hive I've accomplished in my five years of beekeeping. I attribute this to my best winter ever with the hive survival rate I had last year. That had its drawbacks, however. While my survival rates last year allowed me splits to increase from four to seven hives (one to my son's house) and raising my apiary to six, they also provided an opportunity for two of my two hives I did not split to swarm. I was unable to manage successfully the swarming tendencies of these two hives -- a problem many others reported having this year and I'm curious as to why this was such a bad year for swarming. That obviously slowed down production for the rest of summer for those two colonies.

Failures: I've already lost five of the six hives in my backyard heading into winter. I only have two surviving hives and an additional one in my son's backyard -- only the one in my son's backyard appears strong enough to likely make it through winter. I attribute this to later than normal post-production mite treatment (third week of September) and unbelievable robbing that took place from outside my apiary in late September and well into October -- even November. I couldn’t slow this down even with reduction of entrances to one on each hive and with that one entrance reduced in size. As I mentioned, the two hives I have remaining in my backyard are weak and I fear they will not do well over the winter. The upside is I have nicely furnished hives in terms of honey and pollen with which to introduce new packages next year. The downside is my goal of minimizing new package introductions into my apiary is not going to happen next year.

I am proud of this year's honey production and attribute it to better winter management last year -- better mite management with a late an earlier formic acid application than I did at the end of production this year and a late November application of Oxcalic Acid, dribble method on a warmer day. Also, I attribute these success to better air flow in the hives last winter to decrease dampness along with improved winter sugar feeding techniques as well as pollen substitute addition during winter.

I am jealous of everyone who somehow managed this year's higher tendency for hives to swarm and with the robbing epidemic that came late and are heading into winter with strong hives. I am planning on getting over my jealousy and disappointment in my performance so I can hear from others what they attribute their successes to so I can do better next year.

mike

[Matthew Hennek]

I'm pretty sure it's almost impossible to be jealous of my massive 18  whole pounds I harvested this year!  :-)  Making lots of nucs pretty much annihilates any chance of having a good honey harvest.  On the plus side 5 of 6 of my production hives and 2 of 3 nucs I plan to overwinter are "strain your back heavy", so hopefully they'll make it through winter (or our recent super long fall uber dearth).

I've never quite understood why it's bad to share both the good and the bad or why anything related to money is taboo.  Some folks will brag, some folks will lie, but at the end of the day I think most will be honest and humble and hopefully we can learn from those people.  It's no different in my mind from asking about overwintering success rates: both have fiscal implications and both could be taken the wrong way by someone who wants to be offended by it. If you're someone like Paul or Dan or Dale, you're gonna have a big honey harvest but at the same time a whole lot of time/money invested.  If we shy away from the subject we totally miss learning from these guys how to best build hives up in the spring, how to know when to put on supers, how to know when to take them off, impact of excluders, etc.  

There's no reason to be mean, disrespectful or overly judgmental, but at the same time we don't want this to turn into a situation that many college campuses face: fear of "microaggression" and "triggers". http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/the-coddling-of-the-american-mind/399356/  

Just my 2c

[John B]

The short story... Started the year with a one-deep colony. Going into winter now with about the same (but shaped differently, heavy and with a new queen).
Harvested 15 pounds of honey for me.
No sugar, no pollen substitute, no treatments, no swarming, no robbing.
John Bachman
Stevens Point