[Iowanian]

"how much honey"

Well, if you've read this thread....more than once I've been singing the theme from Lowered Expectations.

I've ready a wide variety of numbers on the average, but "the average" hive should produce 30-60lbs of honey per year, and some COULD produce 100#. The issue is there are a ton of variables. Is it a first year package hive(you bought 2# or 3# of bees in a box with a queen and you put them into a hive with no or limited comb)...you're not likely getting much honey from that hive in year one. It's all about getting them into year 2. If it's a swarm, did you get them in May or early June? If so, and you've got some existing frames of comb, they'll go gangbusters building those first 2 boxes and maybe you'll get some honey. Do you have a strong, robust queen and hard working bees in a hive, or are they lazy? Did your queen die or get replaced during the season? Did you work your hives and keep them from swarming, or did half of the bees leave your most active hives? Is it a drought year? Is it a flood year? Do you have verroa mites?

There are just a ton of variables. I guess if I had a goal for my hives, I'd like to see 40-50#/hive average. that would be great for me.


Harvesting. I've posted a couple of times about that with pics. The time it takes I guess depends on how many hives you have, what equipment you have and how you're processing. Grove would have a different answer than I would, because from what I understand he takes full combs, crushes/smashes them and drains honey off into jars.

I've done extraction a couple of ways. I've used someone's 20 frame extractor(which I now own and is 12' from me in my office right now) and last year I used a hand crank 3 frame extractor which took a long time and a lot of small batches. I'm trying to extract the honey, and preserve the frames of comb so they'll be easy for the bees to clean up and repair and fill back with honey the next year. It takes about 8#/honey energy for a colony to produce 1# of wax to build come...so there is great value in honey production next year, by preserving this year's comb.

Basic process for me:
1. use fume board with honey bandit on hive
2. Remove honey supers, and blow as many bees as possible out with leaf blower
3. remove individual honey frames, decap(remove wax coating from honey frames)
4. Put frames of honey into extractor, spin until most honey is out, flip, repeat
5. pour raw honey through metal screen to remove bulk wax and bee legs etc
6. bucket honey
7. store and bottle

If I had to put a time on it, I'd say just processing honey(not bottling) would maybe take 45min-1hr per hive with my setup. So, If I end up with my target of 30 hives, I think it will take me 2 days to get the honey extracted. If I had to guess how much time I have in them in a year? With swarm catches, feeding, inspections, adding supers etc...I'd guess I would easily have 10hrs/hive in them.

I also do comb honey. That's a different process. For those frames, i pull the boxes the same way, remove invididual frames of capped honey, put them into a freezer for at least 48hrs. that makes sure any tiny creepy crawlees are dead. Then I remove those, thaw them, hand cut with a tool into 4"x4" squares and package.

In short, it's all time intensive. All of it. Even if there isn't "work" to do, you still need to check them.....and you're going to WANT to just got watch them do their thing. It's captivating and relaxing to just watch. Great stress reliever, when it's not stressful.


I wish I had taken a pic the other day when I visited a place with 4000 hives. They had them grouped in 4 per pallet in a parking lot with 4 guys going through and feeding them before they place them. They'd just gotten them back from pollenating almonds in california and were getting them ready for honey production. Ironically, the honey produces from almonds is gross. The big advantage for the bee keeper is they come back from a warm climate full of bees and brood and ready for splits when they need a lot of new hives to replace deadouts.