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Bee Keeping
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<blockquote data-quote="rockridgecattle" data-source="post: 742913" data-attributes="member: 6198"><p>I have 9 bee yards with 20- 40 hives per yard. Starting in early April (late march if the weather allows), the intial check of the hives and feeding will begin. About 30 man hours there. Then starting mid April to the end of April rechecking feed and assesing colony strength about 50 man hours, Then starting May 10th spring work up begins. It will take me about 60 - 70 man/woman hours to do the inital spring work up of all yards. This includes, unwrapping from winter, folding the wraps, rotating the brood boxes, cleaning the bottom boards, swapping out old comb for disease prevention, hopefully final treating, feeding, combining weak hives, checking queen strength and possibly requeening, and cleaning up the yard. Then add in treating to knock back mites, another 40 man hours, plus checking feed if the dandylions are late . With three trips per yard, that is about 200 man hours too complete spring work up. Add in that mowing each yard and whipper snipping around our fences and testing the battery of each fencer (need 6000v to keep the bears out). Mowing is done at least once a week. </p><p>From June to July 12th there are the splits to prevent swarming, and maybe some requeening of the hives, and mite monitoring. From there we go into addind brood boxes on single hives, and again checking how the requeened queens took, maybe some more splits. Again about 50 man hours to complete the cycle. Not to forget, disease and mite load monitoring. It takes 46 days from the time a worker egg is laid until it is ready to be a forager for the hive. The goal is to keep the hives rearing bees to take advantage of the flow. </p><p>Starting June 30th the addition of honey supers. About 2 hours per yard, plus traveling, loading and unloading time. This is done weekly depending on heat and flowers in bloom. And again checking on disease and mite loads</p><p>Our first pull starts July 30th, again depending on the weather and the blooms. Pulling honey supers and re supering hives takes about week of full time work for me. We do not have alot of fancy booms and stuff so everything is done by hand. Each day, if I pull 2 supers per hive at 60-100 pounds each, any where from 20 to 40 hives per day. That is on average liftin about 5000 pounds a day. This routine will carry on until the end of August when we pull the final honey, and start fall work up. When not pulling honey, 10-12 hour days extracting. Starting August 15th i start to assess hives for winter success. This is when some hives get marked to be combined or torn down depending on their strenght of numbers and health.</p><p>During the months of June to August, I drink so much water due to the heat in the suits and the heat in the honey house, I could float away. Easy to drink about 5 litres in the morning and 5 in the afternoon when in the bee suits.</p><p>September 1 begins feeding and fall work ups. This includes the usual disease and mite monitoring, combining hives and feeding hives. By October 1 the hives should be ready for winter, October 15th the latest to get 5-7 gallons of feed into them. Then it is time to wrap the hives for winter and have that done by the 31 of october. During these times, the extracting of honey continues. Wish we could afford an inline system...but all in time. Once the hives are wrapped, we leave them alone until march/april of next year.</p><p></p><p>Now this cycle is for our area. In your area, your flow might be longer, and you can start your spring work up earlier. Remember, just like cattle to look at the big picture of down the road when you work a hive. The end goal is to get that hive to be a producer of honey during the flow, and to winter well so you might be able to make a split next year. Just like cows, you need to plan and cost out wht you do. One example I could give is, we watch nutrition and BCS of the cow, for calving, breed back, raising a calf and maintaining a good BSC all year. We vaccinate cows early spring to offer fetal protection to the calf that has not yet been concieved, as well and to keep her Immugloblulins up in the colostrum 10 months from the time the cow gets vaccinated. It is the same for bees. What we do in the spring will affect summer honey production and winter survival.</p><p></p><p>We could stream line abit more if we had some booms and some other heavy equipment, but that is not yet. Maybe someday. My husband would help me in the yards, but he is busy seeding, fencing, fertilizing. There are days when he does help me, but only as he can. In the summer when we are supering and pulling honey, he if he can, helps in the morning when the dew is on the hay fields. Otherwise he is haying. In the evenings he uses the wheeler and unloads the trailer with the full supers cause I am plum wore out. I pretty much take over the farm truck and cattle trailer during the honey season. It is amazing how clean you can get that trailer when you really want to. When we had a couple of hives, our wheels were the 4 wheeler and a trailer.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="rockridgecattle, post: 742913, member: 6198"] I have 9 bee yards with 20- 40 hives per yard. Starting in early April (late march if the weather allows), the intial check of the hives and feeding will begin. About 30 man hours there. Then starting mid April to the end of April rechecking feed and assesing colony strength about 50 man hours, Then starting May 10th spring work up begins. It will take me about 60 - 70 man/woman hours to do the inital spring work up of all yards. This includes, unwrapping from winter, folding the wraps, rotating the brood boxes, cleaning the bottom boards, swapping out old comb for disease prevention, hopefully final treating, feeding, combining weak hives, checking queen strength and possibly requeening, and cleaning up the yard. Then add in treating to knock back mites, another 40 man hours, plus checking feed if the dandylions are late . With three trips per yard, that is about 200 man hours too complete spring work up. Add in that mowing each yard and whipper snipping around our fences and testing the battery of each fencer (need 6000v to keep the bears out). Mowing is done at least once a week. From June to July 12th there are the splits to prevent swarming, and maybe some requeening of the hives, and mite monitoring. From there we go into addind brood boxes on single hives, and again checking how the requeened queens took, maybe some more splits. Again about 50 man hours to complete the cycle. Not to forget, disease and mite load monitoring. It takes 46 days from the time a worker egg is laid until it is ready to be a forager for the hive. The goal is to keep the hives rearing bees to take advantage of the flow. Starting June 30th the addition of honey supers. About 2 hours per yard, plus traveling, loading and unloading time. This is done weekly depending on heat and flowers in bloom. And again checking on disease and mite loads Our first pull starts July 30th, again depending on the weather and the blooms. Pulling honey supers and re supering hives takes about week of full time work for me. We do not have alot of fancy booms and stuff so everything is done by hand. Each day, if I pull 2 supers per hive at 60-100 pounds each, any where from 20 to 40 hives per day. That is on average liftin about 5000 pounds a day. This routine will carry on until the end of August when we pull the final honey, and start fall work up. When not pulling honey, 10-12 hour days extracting. Starting August 15th i start to assess hives for winter success. This is when some hives get marked to be combined or torn down depending on their strenght of numbers and health. During the months of June to August, I drink so much water due to the heat in the suits and the heat in the honey house, I could float away. Easy to drink about 5 litres in the morning and 5 in the afternoon when in the bee suits. September 1 begins feeding and fall work ups. This includes the usual disease and mite monitoring, combining hives and feeding hives. By October 1 the hives should be ready for winter, October 15th the latest to get 5-7 gallons of feed into them. Then it is time to wrap the hives for winter and have that done by the 31 of october. During these times, the extracting of honey continues. Wish we could afford an inline system...but all in time. Once the hives are wrapped, we leave them alone until march/april of next year. Now this cycle is for our area. In your area, your flow might be longer, and you can start your spring work up earlier. Remember, just like cattle to look at the big picture of down the road when you work a hive. The end goal is to get that hive to be a producer of honey during the flow, and to winter well so you might be able to make a split next year. Just like cows, you need to plan and cost out wht you do. One example I could give is, we watch nutrition and BCS of the cow, for calving, breed back, raising a calf and maintaining a good BSC all year. We vaccinate cows early spring to offer fetal protection to the calf that has not yet been concieved, as well and to keep her Immugloblulins up in the colostrum 10 months from the time the cow gets vaccinated. It is the same for bees. What we do in the spring will affect summer honey production and winter survival. We could stream line abit more if we had some booms and some other heavy equipment, but that is not yet. Maybe someday. My husband would help me in the yards, but he is busy seeding, fencing, fertilizing. There are days when he does help me, but only as he can. In the summer when we are supering and pulling honey, he if he can, helps in the morning when the dew is on the hay fields. Otherwise he is haying. In the evenings he uses the wheeler and unloads the trailer with the full supers cause I am plum wore out. I pretty much take over the farm truck and cattle trailer during the honey season. It is amazing how clean you can get that trailer when you really want to. When we had a couple of hives, our wheels were the 4 wheeler and a trailer. [/QUOTE]
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