yoonytoons wrote:

> I am a big fan of open-feeding.  Done right under right conditions,
> nothing beats the efficacy of this method; the bees will work at it just
> like another flow: they wolf down one barrel in nearly two days, depending
> on the number of your colonies.  [Spreading disease?  Probably,

I once open fed, but never again. It is a disservice to both your bees
and to neighbors.

Check under the area where you open feed and you will find a lot of dead
bees.

The bees also get aggressive toward anyone in the area. A neighbor asked
why she had bees bothering her when she never had that problem before. I
was open feeding.

Open feeding may be good for the beekeeper (makes it easy to clean up
the mess we create) but it is not good for anyone else.

I extract twice, once after the summer flow and once after the fall flow
(per George Imire). Supers go back on the hives in the summer (over an
inner cover) and into storage in a non heated barn in the fall. I can
get by with that in our Maine winters. Plus, since I get two to four
times as much honey in the summer, I only have to deal with half or less
wet supers in the fall. The rest are clean.

Bill Truesdell
Bath, Maine

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