The one frame they showed- looked to be completely capped- with just those arcs the bees leave- and the arcs looked to be largely empty. So I was surprised at her water content. I have a feeling some of the other frames may have been less capped?
I have put some hives in someones backyard this spring- and the other day they rang me to complain that they ‘didn’t have any honey yet’. They said a friend of theirs on the coast had a hive and sent them a picture of 8 jars of honey they just got: so ‘why didn’t they have any’? I had already told him that it was a very bad year in SA- the worst in 40 years, and that just because a hive in one region has honey doesn’t mean other hives in other places will… but he said, ‘why can I smell honey then?’. I had to explain to him that he can smell it because it’s there but not yet ready, the bees are curing it… he ended up giving me an ultimatum: ‘6 more weeks’ or I have to move the hives…
He is a nice guy- but very entitled (baby boomer)- and I was tempted to tell him, ‘bees don’t respond to ultimatums!’ and move my hives away- but it’s a great location, and I do hope to harvest in a few weeks, so I am sticking with it. Originally I moved the hives there to pollinate his avacado tree: which the bees did superbly- they had hundreds of avocados- then we had wind, and a heat wave- and almost all the avocados were knocked off- he only had 11 left. The same factors that ruined his avocado crop affected the bees this year. But try as I might he seemed incapable of understanding.
I hope if he watched that show last night he learned that different hives in different location do differently. I hope he doesn’t fixate on those guys that got heaps of honey- or fixate on the fact that all hives produced some. As I was watching the show I was imagining what he might be thinking. The show gave a simplistic view on keeping bees- it never mentioned stings at all really… or dealing with neighbors. They never once mentioned exactly how long the entire experiment took- at the end they vaguely said ‘just a few weeks’- and that could give a very misleading impression to some people… When they moved the rooftop hive they never talked about how many bees would have returned to that roof- if it was just 1km- that would be quite a lot. I have bees coming back from a hive I moved 3.5km’s away…
the two guys that did get a lot of honey: it was interesting how small their yard was for such a strong hive… I wonder how their neighbors felt about that? Their success likely had a lot of viewers thinking: Hmmm- I am going to keep bees and get thousands of kilos of honey: easy as pie! The main issue I had with the show- was that it ddn’t seem to really be about teaching the participants about actual beekeeping- or if it was- it wasn’t very effective. It seemed almost more like it was about people hosting hives. It did seem as if the two urban guys had actually started to maintain their own hive which was good. But there was little information about the absolute basics: lighting and using a smoker, dealing with stings, inspecting brood, registration issues, neighbor considerations, how to read combs, using hive tools, etc.