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).

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