On Fri, Jun 12, 2015 at 7:18 PM, Peter Edwards wrote: > >Average honey production this season was 8.5 kg per hive. > Is there normally enough forage for all those bees? How many colonies per > apiary? > All colonies had a normal development. we didn't have to feed at all. I have gone to that same mountain for the past 10 years, each year bringing more colonies and opening new roads to get into the valdivian temperate rain forest. All years I have had different honey production, but all years the mountain have been able to support all the colonies from november to april. I did different test to gestimate the carrying capacity of that forest and came to the conclution that it is almost infinite, but that doesn't mean the different flows that this very complex forest can give happen all seasons the same. That is the trick I guess. We only harvest current flow when we are sure next one is coming. Usually there are three mayor flows: Tineo (nov-dec), Tiaca (dec-jan)- Ulmo (feb-march) and each of them can have other minor ones associated. This year we use the traditional sites with 1500 colonies we took early november after blueberries and open new sites for another 1500 colonies that arrived late december after avocado pollination. The first ones gave 5.6 kg of Tineo, nothing with Tiaca (only for them) and another 5.6 kg of late Ulmo (plus their own reserves in the brood box - we winter in singles mainly). The second group have to be feed after the avocado, arrived after the tineo flow, gave nothing (ony for them) with the Tiaca, and gave the same 5.6 kg in averaga for Ulmo. Some early season splits that have grown to fill up the brood box we took up hill just for Ulmo flow gave above 15 kg each. What it is interesting is that other beekeeper in similar environments have the same averages but with different/varied hive densities. The main difference between sites can be explained by availabe water for the plants (rainfall+soil types). Particularly in the Ulmo flow (since the mountain looks like with snow because of the white ulmo flowes) you can see that the flowers are there basically in the same density, but when it is dry, the do not last much and do not give much nectar. The other factor that plays against good production is amount of wroking hours. Some years you have the right rain but it is too cold and therefore either flower do not give much nectar or bees do not have much hours with flying temperature. In summary honey production is a very risky adventure downhere (I guess everywhere). *********************************************** The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html