It was a bad year for our hives. We had so little to harvest that we did not extract it, but just made three little bottles of comb honey — and that was it.
sadly… the extent of our honey for 2014. But you can also see some apples we picked from one of our trees. The bees did their pollinating job anyway!
The problem 1) we lost one hive over last winter so that hive was a new package this year. New packages do not usually produce much leftover honey to harvest.
2) We were away for three crucial weeks in June. When we were to leave (the two hives we had were doing great) I was worried the overpopulated one, that made it through the winter, would swarm while we were away. SO.. we attempted a “walk away split” that created two hives from the one. We did not know which part of the hive had the queen, but the best case scenario is the part of the hive with no queen would make a queen. That did not happen for one reason or another (always a mystery with the bees) neither of these hives produced any extra honey for harvesting.
BUT now we have learned a whole lot more about it all and we have two healthy looking hives going into winter with heavy stores in three deep supers. They are in the new relocated bee yard in the woods. We will add a new package in the spring to the hive that did not have a queen and would not make it. Bob disassembled that hive — if there were good workers still functioning, they might find a new home in one of the other hives. But it was probably full of drones from some “laying workers,” females who lay unfertilized eggs that only hatch into drones.
Bob says, farmers have to put up with crop failure sometimes… or something like that
So sorry about the bees and honey. Next year, something to look forward to.