Summer Beekeeping-When should you harvest honey and how much? (Aug 14)

[Music] we're at the end this is it - a bit with beekeepers hopefully you've kept your bees some of had a swarm hi Trisha but essentially the reason we keep bees is because we build them up we get them ready for the honey flow the flow starts and we hopefully bring honey into the hive and then it all comes to an end and it all comes to an end very very quickly so the end of the honey flow is a very important time to learn how to recognize that period of time because your hive needs to be treated in a certain way now after the honey flow is done and we'll talk about that more later but how are we going to take honey off the hive most people I've got honey are you going to extract it with an extractor anybody gonna do the cheesecloth thing no you're gonna do the cheesecloth thing don't ever come here again I don't talk to people who use cheesecloth to extract honey yeah the wax the honey is built into is your most valuable asset and beekeeping it's not the queen is not the bees it's built wax so for those of you who are doing natural eco naturally produced comb with no plastic great job just be really careful when you're extracting it it can blow out an extractor and it makes a horrible mess does any we have an auto extract or a flow hive you guys do how's it going do you have a swarm everybody that had a flow hive has one did you gather us all you sure you weren't home to find out that we [Laughter] so one of the things that's been depressed itself if anybody's looking at that graph that I'm panning around for those of you knew that graph is the graph made by a hive scale that we have on one of our big hives and we'll show you that tonight out the back but the hive scale takes the weight of the hive every hour so on the hour every hour it takes the weight of the hive so we get a picture of what happens in the day so in the morning the way the hive goes down significantly by about five pounds anybody any ideas why the hive weight would go down by five pounds in July no nope the bees leaving so the bees leaving causes the hive weight to go down by about five pounds and then since July 11th it's averaged an upward gain of 15 pounds that's a net gain of about nine because of course the beasts make up the other portion of it so we had nothing until after our last beat the beekeeper which was July 3rd says I think you're on the 3rd of July I wouldn't have anything until the 11th here there were already people north the city who's north of the city anybody north or west so west and north of the city they were having honey flow by the 25th 26th of June Edwin has had this awful swath of summer anybody else agree yeah so the worst summer I would say from my record of beekeeping to manage bees we were managing bees that were full full highs through June we managed to get them through June and then we started to get a little bit of natural stuff in July but the bees have nothing to do we had maximum population in our hives which was supposed to have as beekeepers then they had nothing to do we didn't have flowers out here until the 11th of July but once it hit it hits and it hits hard and it hits fast and the bees did really well but we had cooler weather the last 10 days the bees are actually grown really well on the honey flow the Queen's lay the brood nest will be actually a reasonable a reasonable size and so we've had we've had lots of reports of August warms which is quite rare it's not often we get August ones and they're big swarms too so big challenge with Olga swarms is to get them into a box with enough honey store so they're gonna last the winter there isn't enough time now for those beasts and naturally bring in enough to survive the winter so we're gonna have to make sure you either put frames of honey you haven't extracted in with a swarm or else if you've got a swarm earlier make sure it's enough got enough weight so one of the big questions we've got is how much honey do we take any ideas how much honey we should if you weren't doing outdoors you're gonna winter your bees outdoors this year you need two full boxes so 140 pounds 150 pounds minimum the entire hive weight should be whatever is above that you can take off that's typically from the third box upwards you guys have two brood boxes so they're into each other on 20 frames and then an excluder do you have an excluder okay good and then honey box on top of that you only have undue pun on wintering them outside okay so you're probably not taking it enough there because they need they need all of that second box so good for you if you've managed to get them where do they get the beats from and Wendy to put them in the hive so you bought the hive complete six weeks ago Wow good for you yeah yeah that you want to the whole hive wait bought the wood and everything needs to be hundred fifty pounds so that's typically two boxes so it's usually from the third box up that you're taken off well there's no reason why they'll die anyways that's for sure there's lots of honey there but you got to move there you're gonna have to remove I'd remove the excluder now let the Queen move around sorry no no no it'll move down now yeah it'll move down they'll move it up yeah I don't know about your area but I'm worries gonna finish real quick here and we've got a lot of we've got a lot of a lot of our first boxes have got a lot of empty space because the bees are thinking that there should be more coming yeah so any two for it yes if any of you for any of you who are not taking honey off I don't intend to take any honey away if you can find the Queen and you can put her in the bottom brood box like these people have and put an excluder on its gonna force her to build her nest in the bottom box and it's a big challenge we have is if the Queen doesn't start the winter in the bottom box because the last of the brood that she laid was in the second box they stay up there all winter and so 170 pounds of honey blood and doesn't get touched because it won't go down so now is a very good time to find new Queens and put them in the bottom box and then put an extruder on and then put the second honey chamber on top and leave it there until after Labor Day she will have laid enough brood downstairs that the bees will then focus downstairs and you second box by October by Thanksgiving will be full of honey and no bees in it and they'll use that bag after Christmas yeah so really so it's a really good observation so when the honey is coming in the honey owner comes in for one reason it's because there's enough bees to bring it in and that is a lot of bees so if you're not getting honey and you're wondering why you number one issue whether it's the flo frame or whatever kind of boxes is you don't have enough bees if you've got enough bees and they're packed in there they're going in there they're filling it up beekeepers don't go into their hives when the honey is coming in we don't normally go in to find out how many bees are out because we know there's a lot because we need it to be a lot yeah yeah we've had really humid hot weather yeah so normally speaking in the grand scheme once the bees have started on the honey flow the bees will not focus on swarming it's only get periods of cooler weather they like okay we need to do something else and we've got a lot of that this year so we've had a weird swarms at weird times but if your bees are actively engaged in the honey flow and your hive daily increases 10 15 20 pounds a day they're not swarming if you look at the graph that's being passed around that might have swarmed and you can see 6 days ahead of time the activity starts to they start to switch their mind so when the honey is coming in and prior to the honey coming in your hive should be packed with bees that's normal bees don't have bees don't swarm because they're packed full of the honey flow because the Queen is compressed to a very small area because there's so much nectar they swarm because they're simply not enough room to move or they're not getting out enough during the day and if they can't be it out the front on a fine evening cuz it's raining the inside becomes too claustrophobic so if you had hunt good honey coming in it's a good sound they're not gonna swarm it's when they're lethargic and the honey is not coming in but the hive is massive that's a good sign that their loyalties are shifting yeah what was your first name again will ya sorry okay so when do we know to harbor to take the honey off when the honey flow is done and when the beads of CAP the honey so if you take your frames out and the two thirds capped you can extract that yeah no in Alberta the honey dehydrates faster than the beating Capet so if you beat if it's only two thirds take it because it takes a lot of honey to cap punny the bees have to eat a lot of your honey to cap it over so take it yeah yeah and in complete frames leave them just leave them if you've got a ten frame box this is obviously a shallow but if you got a deep and this fab that are ready to take anybody got ten take 5 only the other five in the center the bees will carry on working there's no honey flow so they won't build comb they'll just finish off capping the honey for you what do you think Albert yeah so so this the canal was done if you've got alfalfa within 2 miles yes no this lot the a lot and so we're moving into it we're moving away from nectar we're moving into borage and aster and goldenrod so they're all pollen bearing flowers so they're not they're not typically we don't we don't in Alberta we don't see a lot a clover yeah sweet well principally principally sweet clover it's the yellow tall bushy yellow stuff you see on wasteland very tall bushy yellow stuff mmm the low small clover that you see in the fields that line to feel unfortunately bad news but it doesn't do very well for honey production Alf Alf was the best yeah but you have to have very good creation you had a very warm because our falfa will only produce nectar from the hottest part of the day for 3 hours every day there's a very narrow window for the bees so the are bringing in alfalfa here right now but it's only for a very short window of time whereas the canola I mean 7 in the morning you get any hive increase yeah you could do one you could do one you could do one in a shed yeah no that's fine and just do to ya have helped though right you know any help okay it's heavy it's real heavy and if it falls over you got a mess on your hands if it falls over you've got a mess on your hands use a ratchet strap and do it on a real cold day so good point so if you want to feed some medicine I don't mind you giving them a leader with some medicine in it but you shouldn't be feeding the beast to get them up to weight they should have done that all summer UB should work for you you shouldn't work for the bees you hive needs to be 150 pounds for wintertime after you take the honey off if it's not 150 pounds then you can feed but don't feed if you don't need to it's a heavy it's a waste of time and it's a mess and it makes you curse yeah so the best thing for prevention for lights is to learn how to check your might load so learn how to check the lights the bottom did you have some you do have some nights do you have a mic shaker they use a mic shaker and if you take a hundred bees if you have more than two mites for 100 bees but you're gonna kill more if you don't do anything and that you should check in the fall yeah in September you should check your might load yeah but don't feed that don't take too much honey away that you have to feed because the feed is expensive but if you're gonna give them some few magellan then just use a small jar maybe one liter two liters mix it and make sure the Sun doesn't shine on it you know that right no sunshine honey be healthy too if you want to do something I do recommend feeding that small pail honey be healthy it's a it's who's it's an additive you can add to the syrup it's essential oils Citroen lemongrass very good yeah it smells great I guess I guess make it getting sticky worthwhile yeah no just in the fall they take it down in the high when they pack it away and then they feed on that in the winter time so they're actually medicating themselves through the through the winter you need to monitor the lower if you go online to our YouTube channel we've got a we've got a video specifically about monitoring your Varella levels you've got a check yes that's how you do it or if you've got a screen bottom board do a mic count over 24 hours might drop you can do it that way too they'll drop your natural drop if you've got anywhere over at all through a natural drop you want to be treating in the fall in the fall or winter yeah very you wouldn't treat until there's no brood in the hive which is typically after a Remembrance Day yeah so in September we'll focus on winter preparation at meet the beekeeper and it's on a Saturday between 1111 and 12:30 11:30 whatever it is the website says so is every Saturday so we'll help you with preparation how to wear your hive what to do how to count for mites you count for max in the fall but then you we recommend treating after Remembrance Day when there's no brooding the hive okay tonight we do have a flow hive to take honey from just two Oh buddy concealer in action we also have our jar hive which was an experiment some people have been following through yeah we've so if it's given us to know what it's given us to swarms they just started to build they just started to build into the jars and they swarmed so I thought okay that'll be fine just let them do their thing we watched the graph and they kept bringing in nectar and ten days later we had a second so on yeah so and then the the bees here have done really well on the back end of the canola flow the brood nest are massive and we've got a lot of bills of bees to deal with so you are gonna if you're gonna go back there tonight you have to have protection on there's a lot of bees and we can't guarantee the condition of the hive so we don't know if they're gonna be cranky or not it has been a really good day so hopefully we'll be fine we do have extra bee suits so if we're gonna suit up we'll go back there and if any extra questions asked any time

Channel: hiveworld

Views: 10,258

Keywords: honeybees, bees, honey, hiveworld, hiveworldca, harvest, honeyflow, main flow, hive, beekeeping, beekeeper, yeg, yegbees, alberta, edmonton, edmontonbees

Id: gp-CBskZu7U

Length: 17min 26sec (1046 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 24 2019