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Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology

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From:
"Janet L. Wilson" <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Thu, 3 Jan 2019 13:40:27 -0500
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Ruth, agreed! In my locale, a harvest of 35 pounds is considered a good haul simply because we have only one significant nectar flow most years (PacNW blackberry). We are on a low lying delta too far from mountain slopes of fireweed to get a fall flow, and the area is very developed, including tons of blueberry fields, which are stripped of hedgerows. No forage there.

I do a lot of population and frame management to maximize my honey yields and typically get closer to 50+ lb. per hive. But I am pretty confident I could never push them to gather 100.

I am amused though that deep in the heart of Vancouver run the rail lines, which are heavily fringed by blackberry, Japanese knotweed and sweet clovers. Beekeepers in a nearby but much more urban setting than mine do aspire to 100 lb. yields.

The local limited nectar flow means colonies are either left all their honey and/or you feed them from July-September. I don't move my bees around so obviously beekeeping is not a money maker for me. The bees subsidize their expenses, but I get no return on my labour of love!

The bigger concern for me in a bee-dense urban area is the ubiquity of mites and disease. When beekeepers share a flight range, they share pests and pathogens along with the forage resources, and if you have some hives with unaddressed disease issues (as we did locally last year), or people running treatment free survivor yards (as we seem to get every few years here) or researchers running experimental setups, whether you like it or not, their disease and pest loads are shared. 

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