Wednesday, August 12, 2015

Over Achieving Bees





I was down pulling some honey from the hives I keep at the Peach Orchard this morning. The bees are finally managing to get some honey cured now that it has stopped raining everyday although the humidity has been high which is slowing the process down a bit.

The Small-Hold Women have been after me to get em some Peaches since our two tree have already ripened and been consumed. The old guy that owns the orchard was like....

"Pick ALL YOU WANT!!!!! PLEASE".

You can see why in the pictures. The girls really went at it this Spring and pollinated every Peach bloom they could find there. It's to the point his limbs are snapping off and he has more Peaches than he knows what to do with.




I must have picked 50 pounds or more off one tree and I didn't even make a dent in the Peaches. The damned Japanese beetles were trying to eat every ripe peach they could get to as well and even they weren't making a dent in the them.




The entire orchard was just falling over from all the ripe Peaches. I would say the girls were a bit overzealous and over achievers with the pollination services this Spring.

I managed to pull about a surplus super and a half of capped honey. There is still a lot of uncapped stuff on the hives and a couple of the hives still had some capped brood up in the surplus supers. Usually the queens are laying well down in the brood boxes by this time of year. I will need to check for tunneling on a couple of the hives before the Goldenrod flow swings into gear.

It's just been a weird year for honey. Lot's of flowers and forage due to the rain but also lot's of humidity and days trapped inside the hive when they couldn't forage but still needed to eat. There is also not a lot of pollen going into the hives yet and that is odd. The queens should be laying like mad building up for the Fall flow and making sure they have a good Winter ball.

Maybe it is a bit too early to be worrying yet though.

Keep Prepping Everyone!!!!!!


13 comments:

  1. wow what a haul of peaches, I am hoping to pull some honey in the next week or so

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Dawn - I am only making a small pull right now to keep people from screaming at me. My last pull should come about mid-September and after that I leave all the rest for the bees for Winter. They seem to get Goldenrod well into October at which point I go through the surplus supers and start downsizing and giving some of the excess to the less industrious hives.

      I really should be getting more honey this year though. I am not sure what is up at the moment.

      Delete
    2. were I am its usually late July mid August we start to pull honey, I only plan to take a few frames as the hives are new swarms from this year at the moment the bees are just starting to feed on the heather thats on the mountain :-)

      Delete
  2. Lucky to get those peaches, not many around here between cold an stink bugs.
    You must have peach honey then!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Sf - I think I might go by and get some more and see if he wants me to try and unload some for him at the farmer's market. Otherwise they may just go to waste.

      Delete
  3. Peach Mead wine? Oh, I would kill to have tree ripened peaches like that. Here in the high desert, there are no peaches and I miss them sorely. You are so lucky!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tewshooz - That guy has been so happy with my bees I think he would let me fill a truck bed full. He said his apples hadn't produced in years until I brought the hives over. I have never seen Peach trees so laden they break like that before. Sure a limb here and there but all his trees are breaking.

      Delete
  4. I'll send some elk over to him. They are evening out the surplus fruit my bees have created.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. MV - I wonder if he could entice some deer into his orchard?

      Delete
  5. What do you mean by "I will need to check for tunneling on a couple of the hives" ? I've just started keeping bees and haven't seen that term before.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Roscoe - Tunneling is when the bees ignore the outside frames of the boxes and only make use of the middle frames. It happens sometimes when you add boxes too soon or when a larger hive get's reduced for some reason and you (As in I in this case) didn't shrink the boxes to fit the new numbers.

      Delete

Leave a comment. We like comments. Sometimes we have even been known to feed Trolls.