Allen writes:
Thus I wait with considerable interest to see how much
honey Lusbys eventually extract from their almost 1,000
hives.

Reply:
Actually 900 hives and yes even with this year not getting
good rains until the end of July we managed to get some
barrels of honey so far, though we were moving our
headquarters from 8 February until the 20th of Sept from
Tucson to Moyza, Arizona an hour and a half drive away, and
left the bees unworked most of the time, and threw half of
the pollen trapped in the drawers of the traps, into the
bushes due to moth in the drawers.

But last I looked fast on a drive thru our numbers seemed
to be holding though others in the area are desperate for
hives and out splitting now, and come 1 Nov not having seen
then since the first part of August I guess we shall see if
we have something to extract for fall and bees left alive,
while we bed our bees down now for winter.

 Sort of like a year shot in half, but we are moved and
with uppacking still to do now, will try to get ready for
another year as we need reconditioned supers now to keep
going forward. But so far in spite of all with the move, I
think we have gotten more honey then anyone else in our
area so far, so shall be interesting to see where we end up
in production/bees, knowing we could have done better, but
didn't even get the new honeyhouse set back up and
operating until 5 June which is late for us in our area, as
most start extracting sometime end April/early May.

Tucson just became to hard to work out of for commercial
beekeeping, as to reach the nearest apiary became a 1 1/2
hr drive (some two hours) due to the rapid growth of the
city now expanding out. So we moved back to the bees.

 Because of the long drive we could hardly breed bees
anymore/nor graft. Now we are back in the hills,and as soon
as I/we can get set up.......we will start rolling again
like back in the late 1980s/early 1990s and then some, as
we have now added a guest facility, and will be putting in
a classroom area, restarting up our workshops, and doing
hands-on, one on one field training, for showing clean
sustainable bio-ecological beekeeping with small cell for
those interested to see the field side.

Respectfully submitted,

Dee A. Lusby
Small Cell Commercial Beekeeper
Moyza, Arizona
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/organicbeekeepers/






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