April 15, 2013: Visiting the Bee Yard
The Bees Arrive
Bee Keeping Resources
Second Bee Feeding: Getting the hang of it already!
Good Day for Flying
Checking Out the Bees and Naming Our Queens
More Than Honey: A Bee Movie
Collecting Recipes for Lip Balm
Honey Wild - July 11
Honey Harvest - July 20th
Splitting the Bee Hives - April 2014
Queen Bees - Spring 2014
Bad Bee Season 2014
Spring Bee Management: Thinking about Swarm Control
Bee Management: Fun and Challenging
8 May 2015 Split the Hive Today
9 May Feeding the Nuc and Watching the Hive Entrance
20 May Queen Status
June 6, 2016 - After Three Days of Rain -- Bee Inspection
June 12, 2015: All's Queen Right in the Bee Yard
June 18, 2015: Bee Status -- All's Well
July 2015 Honey Harvest
January 2016: The Big Snow and the Bees
January 2016: Lessons from Wild Bees: Ideas for Spring Implementation
January 31, 2016: Winter Feeding with Sugar Pies and Pollen Patties
March 10, 2016: Spring is here and we still have to active hives.
March 11, 2016: Being a Good Bee Steward: Spring Examination
April 14, 2016: Splitting Our Strong Hive
April 19, 2016: Lots of Drones at the Queenless Hive
April 24: Examining Bianca's Hive and Watching Entrances
May 9, 2016: Adding Boxes to the Hives
May 12: Bee Inspection: Ant Invasion of Queen Anya's Hive
May 13: Black Pollen?
June 7th: Still no laying queen in Rachel's hive
June 22nd inspection: Finally Queen Rachel is mated and laying
July 6 Inspection: Made a late split
July 19, 2016 Honey Harvest and Hive Examination
July 21: Adding Queen Excluders and Playing Musical Frames
July 30: Removed Excluders and Removed four Honey Frames
Aug. 23: Grand Check of All the Hives
Oct. 11: Frustration of the Backyard Beekeeper
Nov. 3: Winter is Coming
Feb. 20, 2017 The Bee Gym
March 29, 2017 Are the Girls Thinking of Swarming?
April 5, 2017 Lesson Learned: Check ALL the Hives before you Buy More Equipment
April 10, 2017: Making Nukes
April 15: Bears - Weapons of Mass Destruction
April 17: Feeding Nukes, saw a Queen!
April 18: Collecting our first swarm.
June 12: Hoping for a Great Honey Season
July 1: Watching the Work in Progress
July 14, 2017: All's Well in the Bee Yard
3 comments:
When you harvest the honey, don't you also collect bee larvae from the cells? If you do, doesn't this affect the number of bees born being reduced?
Good question!
Right now we have three boxes on the hives. There is plenty of space for the queen to be laying as well as for storing pollen and honey. When the nectar flow starts and those boxes are about 90% full, we'll add an empty super on top of the three (maybe two depending on how hard they work.). The queen may lay up there, but it's unlikely since as bees hatch she has plenty of cells to reuse. We could add a "queen excluder" to keep her out of the honey supers, but many beekeepers think they are "honey excluders" as well and reduce the amount of honey produced.
We harvested about fifteen frames of honey last season (50 pounds) and there were no brood cells at all in the frames we chose so it had no affect on the number of bees. If there is a frame with part brood and part honey, the beekeeper can skip those frames when harvesting.
Thank you.
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