In article <[log in to unmask]>, Alan Riach
<[log in to unmask]> writes
>The easiest, cheapest and best way to get comb honey is to use starter
>strips (2.5cm, 1") on normal frames and then produce "cut comb".
Been there, done that. If you want to seriously restrict your heather
crop (see your comment below about the years harvest) go ahead. In a
good year you will cut down your crop a little, and in a bad year you
will get zero. Going for cut comb you will get well less (over a period
of years) than if you use full sheets, and the difference is a lot more
than the small saving made in using starter strips.
>I agree absolutely about ONLY using one deepbrood chamber and it helps
>if there are plenty of bees in it. When we go to the heather (beginning
>Sept here in Scotland) we like to see bees hanging out of the entrance
>due to lack of space.
Despite the fact there are a lot of local variations, going to the
heather in early Sept will mean that in all but a handful of seasons you
have missed the crop (our last SIGNIFICANT heather flow in Sept was
1983). We start moving to the heather (where there is some bell present)
around 5th July, and aim to complete moving to the ling only sites
around 27th July. (We run four trucks a night, every night, during that
period, progressively filling the sites roughly in flowering order) Peak
weeks are third and fourth weeks of July for Bell, and first to third
weeks of August for Ling. Seasons are earlier than they used to be, and
in any case the OLD traditional date by which you had to be up to the
moors for the Ling was 12th August (nowadays about 10 days earlier).
Regarding the cramping into one deep box, well that is fine if you only
want a serviceable crop of comb honey, but with modern extracting
equipment it is out of date advice, yet it is widely printed as the ONLY
way to go to produce heather honey. Next year try ONE good hive by
getting it up to the moors a lot earlier, and giving it UNLIMITED space,
preferably in the form of drawn deeps. Take the excluder away in the
first week of july to give the queen freedom to lay as much brood as she
wishes (plenty of eggs first two weeks of july = plenty of foragers the
key middle two weeks of August = a heather crop if there is one to get
). Bring the boxes to us and we will extract them for you if you cannot
do it yourself (you are not very far away).
'Hanging out' does indeed give you a 'kick' when you see it, last year
on the bell we had several in one place hanging from the roof to the
floor, round three sides, on four deep box hives, but it is an error to
delay supering hoping for it. It means that these bees which should be
working on getting your maximum crop cannot get in to offload, and
instead of foraging they are being used as tankers. It generally means
you are several days too late in getting to them with more space, and it
has a knock on effect in the winter, as a seriously congested hive just
cannot raise as much brood as it would normally do, and then you have a
lower population of young bees for winter, and not enough young bees
equals poorer wintering. In our case we alleviated the problem by adding
two more boxes to all those colonies, and as it was only late July there
was still enough time for the colonies to recover their laying deficit
once they moved all the nectar up to the new boxes. I'll bet it cost us
10 to 20 pounds of honey a colony on the worst congested ones though,
just through our own neglect to get round quick enough.
>
>Next easiest I've found Ross rounds - the bees fill a small section
>which has no corners much more completely than the small square sections
>(10cm x 10cm - 4" x 4") usually used here in the UK.
Never tried the ross rounds, but used to try the wooden ones (burned the
lot several years ago) but weight for weight we got about 25% of the
crop that drawn comb deeps get (even then only if we were very lucky and
got the bees just right). You CAN get a good price for them, but not
nearly high enough to compensate for the crop difference and the extra
work involved in having the colonies just right.
>
>We always produce cut comb honey on the heather because it's thixotropic
>and difficult to extract, although it never crystallises. However cut
>comb would be messy with some of the thinner honeys and the cut section
>would have to be laid on a drip grid prior to packaging.
Nowadays we extract the lot, and primarily from DEEP combs which the
bees definitely prefer (even for cut comb work). There is a SMALL market
for cut comb in Scotland, and a larger market in whole virgin combs for
export to Germany. Last time we ran significantly for cut comb we got
about 4 tonnes, and started off selling it freely, but came up against
two limiting factors, size of market, and losing the scarcity value,
which ultimately meant that, after selling a couple of tonnes in four
months, we just had to offload the lot to Germany in full combs before
it crystallised (it does eventually, like gravel).
>The heather crop has been a disaster here in Scotland due to sustained
>wet weather.
See above comment regarding timing. It also depends a lot on location
this year, however we do have 45 active heather sites, covering a range
of 100 miles from west Perthshire to central Aberdeenshire, and NONE
have yielded a blank. We have a heather crop of mainly calluna (Ling)
which is ABOVE normal. The Bell failed due to frost on 18th July this
year, but the ling flowed quite freely, although intermittently, from
about 2nd August through to about 24th August. Some sites got their flow
a week or so later than others. You really need the rain to get the
nectar to flow. We actually have more crop failure years (1998 was the
last one) due to dry conditions rather than wet ones (1985 was the last
wet failure). I define a failure as a year with a colony yield less than
50% of average.
Most of the beekeepers I associate with also report a reasonable to good
heather year, and one of them (with over 400 hives) has claimed it to be
one of his best 10% in a career of over 50 years. I certainly would not
say that, but it just underlines the contrasts that you can get.
Incidentally, that guy goes to the heather even earlier than we do. I
have heard several people claiming that it was a failure and presumed it
was an attempt to talk up the market, or (in one case) an attempt to
shift the blame away from management issues on to weather issues. The
crop was there to get in the areas we were in (I cannot speak for areas
outside our range), but, for those with poor crops, a crucial factor may
have been management in late May, throughout june, and the first week of
july. Weather in E. Scotland was seriously unfavourable at that time,
and if you did not spot the curtailment of laying by the queen at some
stage during that time and administer a trickle feeding programme to
keep the brood production up, you will just not have had the weight of
foragers at heather time. The queens in some colonies laid no eggs for a
fortnight in late June due to the incessant cool and dry north-easterly
winds, and a gallon of syrup at that time, even as a one off, stimulated
the queen nicely.
Come back to me off list if you wish more info, as this is a seriously
local situation probably of little interest to most respondents.
Kind regards
Murray McGregor
--
Murray McGregor
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