Pulled Honey Supers

Pulled the last of my supers today. Ended up with 17 deeps, replaced them with 17 mediums. We have about 8 acres of goldenrod that has just started and 10 acres of Joe Pye Weed that is about to start. I left them on about 2 weeks longer to see if they were working the soybeans that just bloomed. Saw them on the soybeans but it seemed they weren’t getting much. They are already on the goldenrod though.

How much honey do you expect to get?

Roughly 50lbs per super.

I always use deeps for “spring” honey and then mediums for fall.

Where you at in North Bama?

Our hives are in Madison and Jackson county. The Jackson county hives are far more productive and stronger. Pretty sure that is due to the environment they are in.

Amazing how much difference there is between here and where your hives are. Just one county away. I never made a drop of honey after privet finished up. All these cow pastures aren't conducive for honey production.

What kind of market do you have for it? Im assuming you dont eat 600lb of honey? How do you go about getting rid of it?

Fur our Jackson county hives barely have a dearth. It can be worse in dry years but this year it was almost non existent. No robbing and stayed productive. The hives are just outside the flood plain so water is never an issue and at the base of mountains. Our Madison county hives are in rural/suburban area and they always have a 4-6 week dearth. We have to watch for robbing which always seems to happen. I believe they don’t have the quantity or variety of good forage available. They rarely produce any surplus fall honey and sometimes not any real qtys that would matter. We almost always feed them up for the winter.


We sell nearly all of the honey, eat a lot honey, and give away some. In my opinion the best/easiest market is to the homebrewers that make mead. They buy it by the 5 gallon bucket, and they all seem to know each other. That eliminates most of the time/effort of bottling. Our kids sell 24 pint jars each to friends/family snd keep the money. We use the jars because you can sanitize them in the dishwasher.

How much for a 5 gallon bucket?

We usually get 200 to 220 for a bucket. Unless we pull Goldenrod honey we won’t have any extra to sell. I’ll have a better idea next week how well the goldenrod is going.

Will a 5 gal bucket fill 20qt jars?

You eat Goldenrod honey? It smells like dirty wet socks when they're bringing in that nectar. I never could even try it. LOL

A quart of honey is right at 3 pounds. 5 gallons of honey is right at 60 pounds so you should get roughly 20 quarts. I bet you get 19 because it is difficult to get all the honey out of a container. You wouldn’t lose a full quart but I bet you would be short on the last jar.

Fur the goldenrod honey tastes nothing like it smells. We normally leave it for the bees but I also will sometimes pull a medium and spin it. I think it tastes fine. Buckwheat honey on the other hand I think is garbage.

Interesting. Yeah I grew some buckwheat one year. Mainly to give the bees something to keep them going during our long dearth and I wasn't a fan of the honey. I never spun any, but tried a comb of it.

I will say some people really like buckwheat honey. Just not me. If it all tasted like buckwheat honey I wouldn’t eat honey.

What are you doing for varroa control? I've gotten lazy the past two years and have really neglected by bees while trying to get a sod business up and running. Went from 10 hives down to 4 over the winter from not keeping up with them. I did get a Saskatraz hive established this summer though. Lost 1 of the 4 in a recent dearth.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65g78v_p-MY

Show 3 different ways to use Oxalic Acid to treat for mites. I use the OAV via vapor, quick, easy, and most important it kills mites. Have been using for 5 years and feel it really has saved my bees.

One of many tools to use OAV in vapor form. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7E9bBnsPTg

I use OAV and Apivar.
1st i test by doing an alcohol wash to determine when to treat and to see if my treatment was effective. I treat all hives in the yard. My OAV treatment is every 3 days for 7 treatments. That seems to knock them down and it has never had a negative impact on the bees. I just finished that. The last week of September I will add Apivar for 45 days.

I will also add that the only hives that I couldn’t control with OAV were my Saskatraz hives. I just couldn’t keep them as low as I like. I think it is because they had massive amounts of brood all the time.

I do an alcohol wash on random hives starting in March and do it every other month or so.

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You're gonna like that Saskatraz queen. I used Apivar the last 2 years I had bees. Need to treat soon.

Fur did your bees ever work Boneset? Ours are working it like crazy. We are actually going to wait to cut the field because they are in it to the point that you can hear them. That field is buzzing. They are bringing pollen in like crazy but I don’t know if they get nectar from it. I thought about opening a hive to check but was in a hurry. Finally the later goldenrod is blooming but they are working the Boneset instead. Always learning something.

We don't have enough of it around that I could say.