A pint short...

[JW_Halverson]

Before I forget, let me say thanks for all the advice you have been giving us this summer.  I really appreciate it and so do the partners.  And while the bees have said nothing, I am sure their lives are the better for it, too!

[BOWMAN53]

judging by the title i thought you were talkin about yourself JW lol hahaha jk

[Poggins]

Just wish there was some way to share with others what I have experienced the last fifteen years of keeping bees , I've witnessed a lot from queens that piped ( pipping is what most beekeepers call singing , almost like a humming or whistle made by vibrating their wings ) to colony collapse disorder , removing bees from trees that had been dozed to bees in people's houses , the different colors of pollen and honey and the smell of a strong hive during a good honey flow .

[JW_Halverson]

judging by the title i thought you were talkin about yourself JW lol hahaha jk

Oh, I can always use a few good pints...

[Olanigw (Pekane)]

Pity Mr. Hal... I'm at the end of my last pint and hoped to trade you for more

[Crogacht]

What type of plants are the bees feeding on? Looks way lighter than anything we have here.

[JW_Halverson]

What type of plants are the bees feeding on? Looks way lighter than anything we have here.

The bees have had near constant access to blooming alfalfa close by, and sweet clover a bit more than a mile away.  There has not been a lot of wildflowers near the bee yard, some flower bed stuff and a very large (3/4 acre) vegetable garden.  One of the worst  plants for adding dark character and some very strong flavors to honey here in South Dakota is gumweed.  It is a low, groundhugging plant with huge amounts of sticky resin on the flowers.  One of it's nicknames among the Native Americans is "buffalo tripper".....imagine fly paper for buffalo!  But the alfalfa got a heck of a running start and shaded out any gumweed in the pastures nearby, thankfully.

I found out from a local commercial apiary that their honey this summer has been equally pale and is commanding a premium....except the sheer volume of honey production is lowering the overall prices.

[Del the cat]

Nice one JW. Honeytastic it made me dribble on the keyboard
Del

[JW_Halverson]

Did a fly by check of the hives today and it looks like I have to pull 4 honey supers tomorrow morning to harvest honey AGAIN!   We are guessing maybe another 7 gallons.

The one swarm hive from early July was harvested from last week and gave two gallons of sweet nectar.  It is already 60-70% full again.  We are going to extract from them again simply because we don't exactly know when we will have time in the next week or so to go back. 

I wouldn't hesitate to say we are making more honey now then when the sweet clover was in bloom during the normal honey flow season.  And for those of you that are afraid we are stealing the honey these bees need to survive the winter, you can rest easy.  All our hives have about 60#s of honey and pollen stored up in their deep hive bodies, we are only taking the excess off the shallow honey supers "up in the attic" of their hives.  They should all do fine.

So far, considering all I have spent on infrastructure, my honey has cost me over $25 a lb.  This third day of extracting is taking the "sting" our of it, though!