Fall Totals and the End of a Season

As the season comes to an end I thought I would post our harvest totals and update some information on our little bee yard. We had a very good year and all of our Hives did amazing. I wish I knew exactly how much honey each hive did but for a small backyard beekeeper it is just easier to total how much honey we produced for the season. We only harvested twice early and a late fall, here are the numbers compared to last year:The chart is in gallons of honey. So for 2011 we had a very successful year. This is the first year where we had all three hives up and running with mostly comb from last year.

-Brunhilda is from a nuc and her first year was 2010 she had a great year for 2011
-Reina is from a nuc also from 2010 and was my strongest hive! She was 7 supers tall
-Carmody is in our backyard and 2011 was year one and she produced 3 supers of honey

I cannot figure out what happened but my strongest hive for 2010 died off in the early winter and the weakest hive last fall was Reina. She was my biggest hive and out preformed any hive I had. I think it might have been because of mites but we will have to see.



Time to kick out the drones!

Sometimes it is fun to watch a little bee drag out a gigantic drone and kick him out of the hive into the cold grass where he will starve and die. The drones are lazy and only consume honey so they have to be kicked out for the winter.

My screened bottom boards should get here today. I will have to do a powder sugar shake and let you know how it goes.