I have a reasonably controlled observation. These were on double chamber hives, New Hamburg area of southern Ontario, much pasture, mixed farming and woodlots and in this year honey flowed from late May to mid August. Just bought 85 hives from a good beekeeper who regularly gets 250lbs/hive, our average is 125 for well run commercial hives. He evened up and got the hives in good shape for me, they were left in the same yards, and he still had his bees in the same area. I beleive that overall then the hives I had were the same as the ones he kept, doubt he'd have given me duds. So only big difference then was that he harvested end June, July and Aug, and immediately had two wet supers back on within a day or two. I pulled end August. He still got his 250 lbs per hive, I got 180lbs. So in these circumstances, I believe that harvesting the 3 times vs 1 did make a difference. If the harvest is  less, maybe frequency is not as important. In this above case, bees would see they had a lot of honey aboard, and had to travel up 5 deeps to store more! But maybe they'd work just as hard if there are 2 or 3 deeps on top, and so theres no difference if you wait to pull 3 once vs the first two and then the last. 



Greg Hawkins

Everton ON

Sent on the TELUS Mobility network with BlackBerry



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