Stick em up

[AJB Temple]

It's been a difficult year for beekeepers in Kent (disease is rife due to the funny weather they say), including us, and we have had to lose one of our hives and re-hive another into an entirely fresh hive, so the bees have to make a lot of comb. The bee people call this a "shook swarm". Looking on the bright side first honey collection this year took place yesterday and we filtered it yesterday evening and produced forty four 500 gram jars and a couple of 2 litre Kilner jars from our first 2024 harvest, which is OK. It's a pretty sticky business cutting the wax caps off and the clean up and sterilisation afterwards is messy. Most of it will be used in our restaurant I expect.

Should be two or three pounds of wax as well to melt and filter and turn into wood treatment.

 

[AJB Temple]

Obviously we are just doing this at an amateur level. I've had a couple of questions privately as to how much honey people can usually expect. I would say that given the summer flow has just started, and therefore this was all mature honey from the spring flow, 20 or so pounds of honey per hive is very reasonable. In a full year if you harvest all of the honey then 40 pounds per hive is a satisfactory yield. With a big colony, good weather and plenty of food, you could get 60 - 80 pounds per hive. We do not take all of the honey though, so rather than feed our bees fondant and syrup during the winter as professionals do, we leave a full super of their own capped honey on each hive, plus whatever they have stored in the brood box.

 

[Mike G]

..at £5 per jar on the side of the road, that's £400 per hive.

Or, it's a massive subsidy of my lifelong honey habit. I must look into this bee keeping malarky.

 

[AJB Temple]

Yes Mike, it can make money but don't underestimate the work and knowledge needed. Do not start beekeeping without a mentor, you need to plan for at least 2 hives and probably 1 or 2 swarm control hives. During swarm season you must go through the hives every 7 days. You will need feeders and invest in the honey collection kit. Bee suit is essential (and hot). Making hives is dead easy for woodworkers. Making frames is tedious and fiddly. Round here home bottled honey is £6 to £11 a jar but is far better than the supermarket stuff. You really can taste the difference.

 

[AndyP]

We have been buying honey solely from local, amateur, beekeepers for many years. Worth the extra few bob it costs.

 

[Mike G]

Yes Mike, it can make money but don't underestimate the work and knowledge needed. Do not start beekeeping without a mentor, you need to plan for at least 2 hives and probably 1 or 2 swarm control hives. During swarm season you must go through the hives every 7 days. You will need feeders and invest in the honey collection kit. Bee suit is essential (and hot). Making hives is dead easy for woodworkers. Making frames is tedious and fiddly. Round here home bottled honey is £6 to £11 a jar but is far better than the supermarket stuff. You really can taste the difference.

We're great friends with a pro apiarist, so we get world class borage honey for £4-something per jar. We're terribly spoilt, as his normal customers are Harrods and the like, and he produces honey literally by the ton. Our son-in-law and his family are also keen amateur bee keepers, so we've plenty of potential mentors.

 

[AJB Temple]

Go for it then. It's very satisfying to harvest your own. There is a learning curve to starting off and even though we both did the local club bee keeping course, we really had little idea what we were looking at in the hives for the first couple of years. I knew we were novicy and a bit clueless and we stayed that way until I found a mentor. Being able to recognise issues early on is half the battle, but that really needs practical guidance I found. My mentor is semi professional in that she has quite a few hives on other people's land and she also produces honey in significant quantities. The honey varies through the year depending on what is in flower. For example rape comes into flower early, and tends to produce very thick honey that solidifies quickly.

 

[duke]

How many hives do you have Adrian?

 

[AJB Temple]

Currently three colonies. Plus a number of spare brood boxes and supers etc. Only harvested one colony so far. Our general aim is to run two strong colonies through each winter and have two spare hives for swarm control going into the following summer. Our main objective is having an apiary for pollination, so honey harvesting is not a primary aim.

 

[Tiresias]

Most of it will be used in our restaurant I expect.

You have a resturant? Didn't know. Probably my inattention.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

I bought a sadly neglected colony at an auction. The first year I just replaced all the frames and cleaned the hive up, replacing a few parts. After the second year I spoke to the auctioneer who sold it to me, he was an experienced beekeeper who had at times 30+ hives. He asked me how much honey I'd taken off and I told him 120lbs. He said I must have stripped it, but I hadn't, I'd left a super and a half. He'd never taken that much off one hive in 30 years of keeping them. I had a third for comb honey from that hive at Royal Cornwall Show, which at that time was the fifth biggest honey show in the Country - It was near perfect comb, it took the bees less than a week to fill it so it was spotless. I'd have had a second if it fitted the box I was told afterwards, but I cut it smaller as it was overweight - I did manage to beat the secretary of the beeking association into fourth place, so I was chuffed - he'd been showing honey for fifty years. Anaphylaxis put an end to it.