Help Please Honey amounts varied

General Bee Chat
1

Hi All, We have just harvested 2 frames from 2 hives, the first for this season.
Both frames were obviously fully capped, but we have only collected 1.4kg each frame compared to 3.3kg each frame last season.
Does anyone have any thoughts on the reason.

  1. We have had a dry winter here but the bees had access to water right throughout.
  2. We did not feed the bees over winter, but left them plenty of stores in the Flow Frames as well as in the brood.
2

Did you visually check the cells were full before they were capped? Maybe the cells were not full and so you got a lower yield.
Any chance of you completing your profile so we know where you are from?
Regards Peter

3

Peter48, where do I do that please?

4

Go to your icon on the top right and click, then you can edit where you need to. Define you hive as Langstroth or a Flow Hive. It will help us with helping you sometime down the track.
Cheers

5

Have had various amounts coming from my Flow Hive frames. (If you have a Flow) Last year when the Tee Tree was flowering I’d be flat out getting a kilo from each frame. Jellybush was the culprit. But yesterday I extracted 15+ kilos from 4 frames. I checked the frames before I opened them by actually pulling the frames out to see if they were fully capped. So I gather it’s all depending on the nectar coming in. Someone with a lot more knowledge could more than likely give a better answer.

6

i’d almost be willing to bet that the honey has candied in the frames- especially if they were left over winter with honey in them- and this is the first time you have harvested after winter?

Pretty sure this just happened to my mum- who also got a relatively low amount of honey out of a full frame just recently. That frame went into winter full of honey… It remains to be seen if the bees will uncap that frame and eat the candied honey or not… currently the bees are rapidly filling out all the frames- so next time that one is full we will measure how much comes out to determine if the honey has been removed.

EDIT: I just thought: if you taste that honey and you can sense some crystals on your tongue: that would virtually confirm it. I have harvest partially candied flow frames and crystals flowed out with the liquid honey.

1 Like
7

If they don’t, you can scratch off the cappings to encourage them. Putting the super on top of an inner cover/crown board (hole open) can help too, providing they have space for the honey below the super.