Hi All,

Well, I haven't written on this list for a while.

On Fri, 21 Nov 2003, Murray McGregor wrote:

<snip>
> We have a major value honey crop, heather, in August here which has
> returns proportional to bee power. The more bees of the correct type and
> age, the more honey. To maximise exploitation of this harvest we take
> away the excluders 5 to 6 weeks ahead of the onset of the flow (the flow
> itself is in a window about 4 weeks long), and allow the queen
> unrestricted laying area. This provides a large wave of young bees for
> the middle and late part of the flow in August.
<snip>

I just read this and thought I'd expand on it a little for those without
heather. Heather yields quite late in the season here and usually in
areas that are fairly high by UK standards. Although the bees like the
forage, they're often working in quite cool conditions, so are preparing
themselves for winter. Their behaviour in these circumstances is,
generally, to store the honey in the brood nest, however we as
beekeepers want it in the supers. In the UK most of us use Queen
excluders to keep brood nest and crop apart. But in the cool and often
damp conditions on the heather moors, leaving in the QX is akin to
shutting the bees out of the supers. In these cool conditions, they just
don't like going past the wire. I've heard many people call Queen
excluders "honey excluders". Mostly I don't agree, but on heather I most
certainly do.

ATB,
        Gordon
--
Gordon Scott                              http://www.gscott.co.uk

                Linux ... Because I like to *get* there today.

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