How important is a "Packed" hive?

[van from Arkansas]

I believe Brother Adam holds the world record honey per hive at 700 pounds 320 k, about.  Astonishing.

[TheHoneyPump]

I agree with Ace.
The highest I heard of out of production hives was 60kg, but I believe you can have 100kg by migrating.
I?m quite sure my best producing queenless spit made 60kg if I had taken all, but it was an exception. I planted two flow fields near them this season and they produced much more honey. Weather was good too. At my elgons there was no drought.
Honey harvest is influenced immensely by climate, or not?

180-280 lb per hive (60-105kg) is typical here in the great white north.  When 180(60) is not made something is wrong with the hive, the beekeeper missed the mark, or it is a bad weather season across the entire apiary. 

I had experimented with double and triple queen hives.  Easily and quickly pushed far north of 450 lbs. Those monsters take alot of frequent attention to keep contained and under control.  Too much to be sustainable as they affect the limited time budget available to get the rest of the apiary.  If you want a -packed- hive, try one of those and leave it alone for anything more than 4 days. 

Yield is determined by;
- local climate meaning; temperature, weather, forage, number of daylight hours, length of the season.
- genetics of the bee is a significant factor. Some are lazy, some work tirelessly
- beekeeper experience and skill
- timing, as staged by the beekeeper skill, of achieving foraging force peak population on point with the onset of the main flow of the flora.

One way to know a hive yield is, of course, to have the hive on a scale.

For average of an apiary, my method to calculate yield is:   Total harvest tally at end of season divided by the number of stable viable hives at the beginning of the season when spring work is complete. Number of hives is the count after cleaning up dead-outs, after weak combines, before splits. That number is the bees, the hives, that the season actually starts with. As example, in the hobby yard end of spring work 2018 left 7 viable functioning hives. End of season, in the fall, harvest tally was 1150kg. 1150/7 = 164kg per hive. Multiple splits, nuc sales, hive crashes, queen rearing and requeening also takes place over the season. Those are not included in the current year yield calc as those works are all about next years apiary, which will be counted end of spring work 2019 and yield per hive determined end of season 2019.

Hope that makes sense and you find it helpful.

[Acebird]

Ace, if BFB is Bioland certified he can sell honey for a very good price, I believ

I don't know what Bioland certified is.  I know that most people that pay a lot of money for honey want it local and untreated.

[van from Arkansas]

HP quote: 180-280 lb per hive (60-105kg) is typical here in the great white north.  When 180(60) is not made something is wrong with the hive, the beekeeper missed the mark, or it is a bad weather season across the entire apiary.


HP that is incredible, my envy, I realize up North there is lots of flowers.  In Montana, something blooms Spring thru Fall.  Your pic shows beautiful flowers as far as the eye can see.   In my immediate area, all forested, 100 pounds per hive would be eye catching, bragging rites.  This area has tremendous flow in early Spring, then fizzles down hill.  Just 30 miles south of me is ag land, totally different: cotton, soy beans and pesticides.
Blessings

[cao]

I have gotten 120 lbs from a hive a couple of years ago.  To get that the hive has got to be strong early and not swarm in the spring.  Like Stinger13, we have a strong spring flow.  By July, after the blackberries are done, there isn't much of a flow for them to put on weight.  I got 30 gallons of honey this year off of about 8 or 9 hives.  The rest of my hives were used for splits.  My priorities, the last few years, has not been honey production but increasing hive numbers.

[SiWolKe]

Ace, if BFB is Bioland certified he can sell honey for a very good price, I believ

I don't know what Bioland certified is.  I know that most people that pay a lot of money for honey want it local and untreated.

It?s an organic label.

[blackforest beekeeper]

Ace, if BFB is Bioland certified he can sell honey for a very good price, I believe.

It`s allright. We "broker" stuff ourselves internally of Bioland. Riches can be gained elsewhere, I guess.

[blackforest beekeeper]

Ace, if BFB is Bioland certified he can sell honey for a very good price, I believ

I don't know what Bioland certified is.  I know that most people that pay a lot of money for honey want it local and untreated.

it is "local" and untreated. Controlled by agencies controlled by the government. Yearly inspections. Nosing into every sheet of paper, in the cellars, in the extracting room, into the hives. Expensive!
it`s certified organic honey (and mead and wax) which can be sold not only to the people knowing the beekeeper, but to others in organic shops because the customer will know that certain standards are fullfilled.
"Bioland" has pretty high standards.

[blackforest beekeeper]

Ace, if BFB is Bioland certified he can sell honey for a very good price, I believ

I don't know what Bioland certified is.  I know that most people that pay a lot of money for honey want it local and untreated.

it is "local" and untreated. Controlled by agencies controlled by the government. Yearly inspections. Nosing into every sheet of paper, in the cellars, in the extracting room, into the hives. Expensive!
it`s certified organic honey (and mead and wax) which can be sold not only to the people knowing the beekeeper, but to others in organic shops because the customer will know that certain standards are fullfilled.
"Bioland" has pretty high standards. Only topped by Demeter.
we fulfill most standards of Demeter on a free-willed-basis.

[blackforest beekeeper]

https://www.bioland.de/start.html

"Bio-Land" means literally: "organic country"

[blackforest beekeeper]

@THP: If you average on the "viable" hives with beginning of flow...
....what`s the percentage of viable hives to wintered colonies the year before? Of course incl. all nucs.

[Acebird]

It?s an organic label.

With all kinds of chemical treatments?  Moving bees from here to there?  I can't fathom anything in Europe being "organic".  Way to high a population density.  Possibly you could be organic with plants but bees?  I don't see it happening.

[blackforest beekeeper]

I use organic acids, nothing else.

[SiWolKe]

We could fight about this "organic" treatments all the time and about any honey being "organic" which is not. Bees cannot be directed to a field which is not sprayed, but I know about the laws and supervisions.

I took part in a class of "wesensgem??e Imkerei" but I never understood why treatments were "wesensgem??", just as harvesting all honey and feeding sugar. 

But the organic acids are much better than any other chemicals. I?m not one attacking those who have their income from their bees and must treat. They are my co-workers.

i know about the difficult circumstances of the yearlong propagating of weak stock, making extinct all ferals.

Still, the treatments, organic or not, set free genetics by treated bees which will not have a chance to survive. In the long run I hope the first step will be not to treat prophylactically, the next step a soft bond approach, leading to hard bond.

The commercial beekeepers and the hobbyists must have access to more resistant stock and it?s starting. If a queen costs 500 to 1000? this never starts.
So associations plan to include beekeepers in their resistant breeding programms, an action long waited for because the science is not interested.

[paus]

What is "Organic"?  If it is found in nature it is organic, by some definitions.  If it is found in nature and is used for some other purpose it is organic or not by other opinions.  The definitions go on and on depending on personal opinions and much to often on politics.  I think we have common ground by agreeing that organic honey probably does not exist except in very remote areas.  Maybe this should be a new thread.   I should have checked for organic as this is mentioned in many other places in Beemaster.

[TheHoneyPump]

@THP: If you average on the "viable" hives with beginning of flow...
....what`s the percentage of viable hives to wintered colonies the year before? Of course incl. all nucs.

Depends ... how much munching the mites do over winter, how cold and how long the winter has been, stores level, super microbe epidemics, etc, etc.  I interpret what you are really asking as what are the winter losses.  Anywhere from 5% to 95% can happen, crap happens eh.  Though typical is 5%-15%. 
For numbers and modelling, see my comments in the other forum thread here which is titled: ... Plans for Next Year ...

To add clarity, or perhaps confusion, :  Number of wintered hives is irrelevant. Number of hives yet to be made from splits and nucs is irrelevant. Viable means a hive that has survived the winter, is fully functioning and fully self sufficient, and of acceptable strength to put into production for the season. Viable count = those hives that are left after all the spring work is completed, on the call date. Any splits/nucs that are taken later; those are all about -next year- apiary and thus are not counted in assessing current year honey yield.

[Oldbeavo]

Just a bit on the organic theme, In Oz you have to have no farm land within a 5km radius of your hives to get Organic certification.
Sites are checked by an independent person.
No treatments are allowed, though we don't have Varroa to contend with.

[Acebird]

I use organic acids, nothing else.

It doesn't matter what you are using.  The point is you are using a chemical as a pesticide.  If you were to print what pesticides you are using right under the organic label the odds are people would not pay a premium for the honey even though it is certified organic.

[SiWolKe]

I agree with Ace.

When I sold my honey at the christmas market I sold it as treatment free, like it was.

All persons who purchased a bottle never knew that bees are treated.

My bee class mentor who sells organic honey said you get the certificate if you practise a certain kind of management, no excluders, no foundations, no queens introduced...a more natural kind of beekeeping.
That was the "demeter" label. He gives informations on his label that the honey might be coming from sprayed areas.

[blackforest beekeeper]

I use organic acids, nothing else.

It doesn't matter what you are using.  The point is you are using a chemical as a pesticide.  If you were to print what pesticides you are using right under the organic label the odds are people would not pay a premium for the honey even though it is certified organic.

O well. Whatever.