Kitchen Garden Forum

Hi Jenny, 7 Supers, assuming all frames were full,would yield somewhere between 110-150lbs of honey depending on how warm the honey was when being extracted.You would not expect this sort of yield on an average year, last years summer was a good one.

what a fascinating subject!
I've often thought about keeping them - they're amazing little creatures aren't they?
Um, what's a "super"?
ta!

It's the bit that goes on top of the living area [brood box] which the bees use to store all the honey they are building up for their winter....... and we pinch to eat.......

A bit like Bugs life...... only we're the grasshoppers

if the bees make the honey to live on during the winter, and we pinch it, what DO they live in over the winter?!
Poor little things

beeman2 wrote:Hi Jenny, 7 Supers, assuming all frames were full,would yield somewhere between 110-150lbs of honey depending on how warm the honey was when being extracted.You would not expect this sort of yield on an average year, last years summer was a good one.

Flippin' heck!
Lynne, I think you give them sugar water over the winter to keep them going, while you eat their honey. Aren't humans cruel?

Syrup, in a special feeder.

Imagine a ring cake tin, where the central bit is, ovelaid with a layer of perforated zince, lower than the outer and the whole with a lid, that pops onto a sheet of ply with a strategic hole, on top of the last used super/brood chamber, inside an empty super with the hive lid on top. Has to be kept topped up and it is syrup, sugar water would ferment.

Alternatively, a cake of solid sugar in a cardboard case with a cellophane window in the case, open side down and wait till you can see the bees through the cellophane on the top, then replace.

I can't bear the thought that they do all that buzzing, and pollinating, and loveliness, and then we steal their food. It seems really mean, somehow
Right, I'm orf to have a bacon sandwich

OOps, didn't mean to upset you..... that's a rather simplified version.

Coming into winter the bees start to die off [and all the males are killed ;o) well die off and aren't replaced] This frees up more space in the brood box and the bees can store more and more honey here. They use this to live off over the winter. Well they have in my hive anyway.

For example my bees didn't have any supers left on over the winter and I've not fed them at all........ they still have loads of stores [honey] left in the brood box.

Some people supplement with sugar water, some with patties, esp. in the spring when you want your hive to build up quickly. I personally leave them to it 'cause they know better than me and I would only feed if stores looked low.