Honey Harvest Done; Sales Going Well

Been awhile since my last post. We've been super busy around here, but in the midst of it all I harvested about 250 lbs of honey, pulling from just 6 of my 12 hives. I left the others alone because they were swarms I captured this spring, and I didn't feel they had built up enough reserves for me to take their honey right before going into our usual Aug/Sept/Oct dearth.

Sold about 45 lbs at work (I charge a discounted $10/lb) and I'll be selling a couple cases to a small cafe which specializes in all-natural ingredients. Also sold a case at the boxing gym I attend. The rest I'm selling at our new shop, "Bubba's Antiques & Mercantile," which just opened this weekend... the reason we've been so busy!

Here's a shot of the display featuring my honey:



It's been well over a month since I last took a look at the hives, so I'm about to go do that this morning. Hopefully what I find are strongly populated hives with plenty of reserves to get them through the rest of summer and all of autumn--- until the eucalyptus trees start blooming in early winter.

Warm Weather and Busy Bees

We're having a warm spell here in SoCal, and the bees appear to be reacting by bringing in a bunch of pollen--- which may mean the queens have all started to step up the pace of egg-laying. As spring approaches bees start building up their population, which they allowed to kind of stabilize through the winter so they wouldn't use up their food stores.

I'm guessing one source of pollen is California Pepper trees (bright orange pollen); but there's a white pollen coming in too; don't know what that is.

My concern is that they're misreading the weather a bit, and the "build-up" may be a bit premature. We're supposed to have another week of nice weather, and then some rains... and typically we still get some sub-freezing nights/mornings in January, followed by February, our wettest month. If it gets too cold for too long there may be a problem keeping all the new brood warm (not enough bees to cover all of it, possibly). We'll just have to see.

I'm optimistic that this will be a strong honey season, though, because so far the hives have stayed well-populated and healthy. I need to remember to do a mite check this next week on the two Carniolan hives in particular, to see if the powdered sugar treatment I gave 'em last week had any impact.

ON ANOTHER NOTE-

I visited a local Farmer's Market today, and once again found that no one is selling any local honey. Seems like a great place to target for my harvest this year. I've also got two retail stores who have indicated they'd like to carry my honey, so I'll have plenty of outlets for this year's crop.

Cold and Rain... at Last!

Winter finally came to Southern Cal in the form of a week of below-freezing temps at night and then a week of good, soaking rains. Naturally, most of the time the bees all stayed home in their cluster (they need to keep the core of the cluster, where the brood is, at 95 degrees at all times, so they "shiver" in a big mound of 60,000 bees or so to make that happen). I was anxious to see how they'd fared.

Today the sun came out and the temps got into the mid-60's, and the good news is that all hives were active. Aside from foraging flights they also take "cleansing flights"--- they don't poop in their hive, so they have to hold it 'til they get a chance to fly. So even the non-foragers take a loop or two around the outside of the hive, just to relieve themselves.

I took the opportunity to retrieve the second packet of Apiguard I'd put in the one Varroa-infested hive. They didn't do a very good job of emptying the this packet, so I have no idea how effective the treatment actually was. I replaced the frames I'd removed to make space for the packet; next week I'll slip a sticky board under them and get a mite count.

This is the exact time of year I lost a hive to mites in 2008, so I'm being extra careful. I want to keep all the hives strong, because with these rains we should have a good eucalyptus bloom this winter (great honey!) and a very robust sage bloom in the spring, along with other chaparral bee-favorites like holly-leaf cherry. Last year the holly-leaf cherry never bloomed; it was just too damn dry.

Within the next month or so I'm going to try to find a neighboring ranch that will allow me to place 4 hives or so on their property. With eight hives on my ranch I think I'm overwhelming the area; I need to spread out a bit. My goal for 2010 is to get 12 hives producing 20-30 lbs of honey each, which would give me 40-60 8oz jars per hive; a reasonable number to sell at the local small farmer's market.