>Would NWC and Russian bees need a little stimulation during these 4 weeks
to keep raising brood in order to have strong populations for the golden rod
flow?

Most bees would .

supers of honey on has nothing to do with stimulation. Pull supers and feed
a thin syrup to stimulate. Stop a couple weeks before the flow. A half
gallon or a gallon should do the job.


> Most of my queens are Italian crosses and they seem to slow down their
brood rearing only slightly but I have been pondering changing over to a
good Russian stock (like Purvis Brothers' Blue Line).

I have had good luck with both Purvis Brothers lines. The Blue line is
typical Russian and needs management such as talked about above. We are in a
severe drought in Missouri. I have been extracting since first of July and
soon will be halfway done. Hard to judge honey production under those
conditions but my guess is the Russian Blue line produced in excess of 100
pound average in most locations. The Gold line did a super better in the
same area.

The flow started two weeks early and my bees were ready and supered. Other
beekeepers not prepared are are reporting smaller yields.

We had almost no sweet clover this year. The honey was mainly white Dutch
and has a flavor similar to honey produced north of us in Iowa.  We usually
get the big sweet clover flows and Iowa gets the white Dutch flows. Not this
year in our area.

Our clover flow has been over for about a month. I have not needed to mow my
yard  in a month. Burned brown. Feeding hay to the livestock. Hay prices
starting to climb and getting hard to find.

I went yesterday to check fall locations. Will soon start moving hives onto
east wildflower locations and two south sunflower locations. All Russians
will go. They will winter like Italians going into winter with plenty of
stores by doing so. I will have to pull frames of honey/pollen in spring to
get the Russians going (or at least I had to last spring)
.
Sincerely,
Bob Harrison

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