Fall 2014 - Low Honey Levels

In the late summer of 2014, I was taking off the last of the honey supers.  I'm always late getting them off, mostly because I work full time so I have limited hours and also need to work around the weather.

We started in our new bee yards in the spring of 2014. We had put some distance between ourselves and corn crops. We're hoping this will make a difference.

We did not have a super great summer. It didn't get really hot and we had a lot of rain. The bees did build up from their low numbers in spring but last summer they didn't peak with the mass numbers of bees like they used to.

When hefting hives in Sept to check their stores the truth of the matter came to light. They did not have enough stores to get through winter. When normally I could take from one to three supers from a hive I could only take one.

I didn't mind not getting as much honey. What was concerning was that the bees had again spent a good deal of the summer requeening to the point that they could not build up enough workforce to forage--and/or the foragers were dying in the fields and not making it home.

I really hope this year proves to be a better summer. The bees need it.