It’s impossible not to be excited and optimistic at the prospects of visiting the beehives and taking off their supers full of honey. After the year’s nurturing and monitoring the act of removing the supers and straining under the surprising weight of a full honey super is incredibly satisfying. I always feel that it is because of my care and vigilance that the bees have returned their thanks with the golden prize of surplus honey. At this stage of my beekeeping journey I realise that the bees will do whatever it takes to survive and would prefer“ If you please beekeeper, just leave us alone to get on with it”. The factors that contribute to a good honey crop are numerous, but the one dominating factor, over which no man or bee has control, is the weather.
My window of opportunity to remove the honey suppers was small in between the wet and windy weather this August. The bees did not like to be disturbed (see Ouch!). I approached the hives to find most of the supers were not even touched by the bees and they still had clean foundation that was not even drawn out. Hive after hive this year disappointed (hmm that sounds like I’ve loads of hives…I don’t). Given the weather all year I wasn’t actually surprised and I left most of them with any honey they had so that they would have resources for themselves. Thankfully, I did get some surplus honey so I was able to roll up my sleeves and use my brand new shiny electric honey extractor 😊 see Big Brown Box. These honey-giving hives were given an extra feed straight after taking the supers off. My main concern now is that all the hives have enough food to carry the bees over winter. Fuchsia is still around and Ivy is coming into flower early so I hope the weather stays good enough over the next few weeks for the bees to stock up on a bit extra.
I had heard that the honey harvest throughout Ireland is poor this year (2020) thanks in part to a very dry April and May (when we need it a bit wet) and a very wet June and July (when we need it more dry and sunny). The high winds experienced early in the year seemed to have also stunted the growth of blossoms for some of the plants which are very important to bees such as the all-important Sycamore and Hawthorn. White Clover, one of the honey bee favourites in these parts (FIBKA flowers for bees), yields best when day temperatures are between 20C and 25C or higher with plenty of moisture in the ground – temperatures weren’t good this summer. I checked the weather hypothesis with the Met Eireann Stats which is interesting reading for those who love numbers. It’s a bit clear as mud to me but seems to support the hypothesis. Did you know that not all bee plants are equally important to bees and honey production? For an in-depth research article see here. The loss of a few of the main bee-flowers at the wrong time has a huge effect. It’s farming, some years are good, some are not so good. You have to be a bit stoic and just get on with it. At least the bees were good pollinators in their new home in the orchard.
The new shiny electric extractor made it a piece of cake this year to extract the honey from the frames. As it’s a radial extractor I didn’t have to take out and rotate the frames to get the honey from both sides so it was in with them once and out when they were empty. I was finished and done with the honey extracting all too quickly. The extractor was a huge expense and it is an extravagance for a hobby that doesn’t pay for itself but having used it I think I should have bought one long before this. Why should I be giving myself a hernia for the sake of a hobby?
I have some honey…
…and I have some wax.
I’m happy about that.
There’s always next year. 😊 😊
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