Hive report

Oops – that went quickly!

Oh dear, we’re at the end of October already and once again I’ve been too busy to do much in the way of posting.

So, where are things now? Well what a season. The combined colony count is up to ten, and the harvest of honey weighs in at over 100 kg. I’ve kept a record of honey harvest by the number of frames and then allocated the total for each harvest proportionately, it is rough and ready but good enough to get a feel, the scores on the doors are:

 Hive Number 05/05/2014 18/05/2014 08/06/2014 13/07/2014 Totals
D1                    8.1                      –                    7.2                    6.6          21.9
D2                    3.7                11.2                    9.3                    7.7          31.8
D3                    3.7                      –                    2.0                    4.4          10.1
D4                    3.7                    0.7                    5.6                  11.0          21.1
D5                      –                      –                      –                      –               –
D6                      –                      –                      –                      –              –
D7                     –                    3.6                      –            3.6
D8                     –                    3.7                    0.4                     –            4.1
T1                   8.2                    0.4                      –            8.6
T2                      –                      –                      –                      –               –
T3 2.9  3.0 2.8                      –            8.7
 Grand total 22 26.8 31.4 29.8 110

So what can we take from this?  Well:

  • D5 and D7 were in the copse, I placed D5 there last year, when the weather was hot. I’d read that bees don’t do well in woods and now I can see why.  The damp wasn’t conducive to them doing well, the bees were aggressive and so lesson learnt.  Key lesson: don’t keep bees inside woods
  • D2 – what a performance!  At times this hive was stacked with supers, and the 31kg is an understatement as it doesn’t include a national brood box they filled when we ran out, but then couldn’t extract.  The hive was on the edge of the copse, good ventilation, sun in the morning.  It didn’t swarm, and that seems to have made all the difference.
  • D1 & D4 – solid performances.  They were sat on the edge of a field which has OSR early on, and whilst they swarmed it didn’t seem to stop them having a good year.
  • T1 and D3 – both started the year in national brood boxes and ended them in commercial brood boxes (which is the size I run), so they took a bit of time doing so.  It would probably have worked better to bite the bullet and move them move actively earlier rather than the slow way I did.
  • D6 – beekeeper error! A ham-fisted split from D1, meant that they ended up queenless, which meant they needed a frame of eggs and brood.  This put them behind and then weak going into late summer.
  • D8 – split from D1, did well to make a surplus.
  • T2 and T3 – Did OK, they were on a different site.  The main problem being their tendency to keep swarming, which we need to deal with, but that is a problem for next year …..

David

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