A simple question about honey, please help ❤

I am a first year beekeeper. Things going fine this far.

Now the time to harvest honey is approaching. I have a six box high hive, and it should be overwintered as two medium boxes.

So fine, I take the brood frames and place them in the middle of the lower box. Pollen on both sides next to it. Then honey.

Upper box full of honey frames.

The rest is OK to "steal".

Why do bees produce bigger stores than they need?  And why are beekeepers still feeding them sugar???

Hi Kaarina,
I'm not a beekeeper, and I can't help you with why the bees produce so much more than they need. However, I understand that the sugar is to help the bees have a headstart in the spring, so there is not as much die off. Or to allow them to take more honey than should be taken to allow the hive to get through winter.

Matt is right. The main reason people need to feed their bees sugar is because they took too much honey. It's also necessary when starting a new package of bees that doesn't have honey or even any comb built yet. The first year with a new colony I don't take any honey, except maybe a small sample. The first year is all about getting them through the first winter.

What do you have right now? One or two boxes of bees & four boxes of honey? In my climate most people overwinter one box of honey with 2 boxes of bees. I think your winter is much longer so two boxes of honey for 2 boxes of bees is probably about right.

Try to keep the frames in the exact order the bees have them. Some slight rearrangement may be necessary but mixing things around makes more work for the bees. The basic idea is to remove empty boxes before winter, not to completely remodel their house.

Several years ago I started delaying harvesting any honey until after winter. That way I am confident the bees have enough quality food for winter. Sugar will keep them alive but it's not especially healthy for them. Doing it that way gives an earlier harvest, except for the one year delay. I know one person who freezes entire frames of honey just in case he needs to feed them later. Marked so that the honey could go back to the same colony it came from.

Oh Matt and Mike, thank you!!!
I felt reluctant to rob them of their honey and substituting it with industrial agriculture sugar. But EVERYBODY says you take the honey full stop.

It is awful that I have been trained to do a lot of things that I feel awkward about, like constantly peeking into the hive and lifting their home frames up in broad daylight and diluting the smells. And robbing them of their winter stores.

Harvesting in the spring is a brilliant idea! That way, I will get an idea how much they need. I am not trying to make a business out of my bees - a couple of kilos will be more than enough for me.

And I will follow their lead and disturb their house order as little as possible. That is easy, it has been my instinct all the time. I have been observing them a lot, just sitting there and looking at departures and arrivals like an airplane afecionado 😄.

I noticed they got defensive if I tried to peek in, so I stopped doing it. I only checked if they need a new box and quickly added it. And resumed remote observation.

You can tell a lot by the amount of girls departing and coming back. It is so funny, I tried to follow where do the depart to, but they make AirForce look like clumsy rookies! Coming back, they are like overloaded jumbo jets in boisterous wind.

My girls have been tremendously busy, I have had to add 5 shallow frames to the two they came in. I think the farm is great for them. I have meadows and a 2 acre forest, fruit and berry garden and lots of dandelions, willows and clover. They have been buzzing back and forth tirelessly all summer ❤

It is so hard to be a new beekeeper and being trained to do things the conventional way, although your instincts scream otherwise. I start to doubt myself - here I am, with my first hive and I think I know better than my experienced teachers?

But then, they do it to earn money. I run a permaculture paradise ❤. I love all the wildlife I have: the frogs that managed to grow in the swales before drought started, the ducks leaving their droppings on my pier, the destested snakes others would kill, salamanders, all the hundreds of birds... Bees are part of the family, and I am happy to take their leftovers in the spring. Just like I have far too many fruit trees and berry bushes - that way I can easily share the harvest with birds without a battle involving scarecrows and nets.

Thank you so much for helping me out ❤❤❤
I just LOVE this forum.

Your farm looks like a great place to be a bee. It sounds like you are on the right path to being an excellent natural beekeeper too.

I like your airplane reference. I had one particular hive that I sat & watched every day after work. It was called bee O'Hare, named after a very busy airport in Chicago.

I put in my varroa treatment today. It is chilly, only 2'C. Took off the top, placed the tymol pad. No sign of bees since the top box is honey. But 30 seconds later, the troops flew out to check who took away their roof?!?!
I quickly replaced the roof. Sorry girls!
I adore the way they protect their hive - even in freezing temperatures and a chilly polar wind ❤

You know what they say, right? Ask 10 different beekeepers a question and you’ll get 11 different answers!
If you want to know more about bees instincts and preferences, I highly recommend Honeybee Democracy, by Thomas Seeley. He has a career of researching feral colonies in New York.
Bees will keep collecting and storing honey as long as they have space. In the wild, this serves them in two ways: first, without a beekeeper feeding sugar, they are always one bad season away from starving. The more they put away in a good year, the better they can weather a really dry or really wet year. Second, a wild colony does not have infinite space. Their instinct is to gather as much as fast as possible, then reproduce (swarm) when the hive is too full. The more stores they have in the fall, the stronger they can swarm in the spring and the better chances of survival all around. A beekeeper coopts this instinct by giving them more and more space and taking extra honey, which reduces their swarming instinct.

As for why beekeepers feed sugar - it sounds like you really do have a bee paradise! Not all of us are so lucky. My honey flow goes from April- May with poplars and locust, some clover in June, and then almost nothing in July and August. Some asters in September, but not enought. Some of that is the loss of hay fields to green lawns, but some of it is that we often get less rain than flowers in our area would like during the summer.
So: last year, I had a hive that came out of winter strong and with plenty of stores. I put some extra boxes on, and left it alone for a few weeks. Next thing I know, there are bees in the tree. When I went in, I found that the one I saw must have been the second or third swarm - and there was less honey in the hive than there had been in March. By the time the new queen got the numbers up, the flow was over. They had no stores.
This year, I had to buy packages, because I tried to go treatment free last year… sigh. The packages arrived in April, and had fully drawn comb. The built up fast, but didn’t end the flow with much honey. I think the build up was just too late. So now I am feeding them sugar to get them through the winter.
Regarding when to take the honey- some people do recommend shrinking the hive so that they have less cold air around them. I don’t know how much that matters, and others will say th opposite.

Hi Kaarina....I have been following Natural Beekeeping with Dr. Leo Sharashkin.  This information about him is from his website:  Dr. Leo Sharashkin is founder of  https://www.horizontalhive.com/index.shtml   and editor of Keeping Bees With a Smile, a comprehensive resource on keeping bees naturally in horizontal hives. He contributes to American Bee Journal, Bee Culture, The Beekeepers Quarterly (UK), and many other publications, and speaks internationally on sustainable beekeeping, organic growing, and Earth-friendly living. He holds a PhD in Forestry from the University of Missouri and a Master’s in Natural Resources from Indiana University. Author of world-renowned research in sustainable agriculture, he lives with his wife and four children on a forest homestead in the Ozarks in southern Missouri where they raise bees in a variety of low-maintenance, easy-to-build horizontal hives.
I believe he has never purchased a hive and he provides a ton of free information online/YouTube.  There are a few individuals that have invited him to their place and have filmed it on YouTube. He also does not treat for disease with chemicals.  
Your place is truly a paradise on earth!  God Bless...

Monica Strazz wrote:Hi Kaarina....I have been following Natural Beekeeping with Dr. Leo Sharashkin.  This information about him is from his website:  Dr. Leo Sharashkin is founder of  https://www.horizontalhive.com/index.shtml   and editor of Keeping Bees With a Smile, a comprehensive resource on keeping bees naturally in horizontal hives. He contributes to American Bee Journal, Bee Culture, The Beekeepers Quarterly (UK), and many other publications, and speaks internationally on sustainable beekeeping, organic growing, and Earth-friendly living. He holds a PhD in Forestry from the University of Missouri and a Master’s in Natural Resources from Indiana University. Author of world-renowned research in sustainable agriculture, he lives with his wife and four children on a forest homestead in the Ozarks in southern Missouri where they raise bees in a variety of low-maintenance, easy-to-build horizontal hives...

I made and put out 4 of his traps in widely varying locations. Caught 0 swarms. Hopefully better luck next year!

I would recommend checking your local area. There is usually a bee keeping group and they can answer a lot of questions and mentor you. I do remember not to eat bananas around them or before you go to the hive. Banana odor is the same as the bee's predators and they will attack. Also you may need to move your frames around during the winter. If it is cold they will stay by the queen to keep her warm and can starve to death because they won't go to the outer frames for food

Hi Kaarina,

our bees are in Europe as are yours, only more to the south - in Slovenia, home of the Carniolan bee strain.

In my view bees are like hamsters, they will keep accumulating food until they run out of space or out of harvest.

You don't have to remove all the honey that you judge to be surplus just because of the honey itself. The really good reason to remove full honey boxes (apart from the one above the brood) is to shrink the volume of the hive so it's easier for the bees to keep it at a sensible temperature over the winter, especially in your harsh climate.

But don't just mechanically remove boxes - always check where the colony is really located inside the hive because sometimes the bees will move a box or two up from where you would have expected them to be.

When there is sufficient honey in the hive you don't absolutely have to feed sugar. A lot will depend on how things to in the spring. If there is a too early warm spell the bees might wake up and start using up the stores at a faster rate while there's nothing yet out there to harvest. At that time, if they start running low, it would be a good idea to add sugar as cake or even just as dry sugar - OR you could have some frames full of honey from the previous year which you can "plug in" as needed.

While the honey option is great, it's a good idea to know which frames came from which hive - for sanitary purposes, to avoid any disease spread.

At our location we mostly feed sugar with some protein in August and early September because at that time, the winter bee generation is being created and there absolutely needs to be enough carbs and pollen - and unfortunately there usually isn't enough in nature. Only after mid-September do we have abundant crops of buckwheat. So there's usually no problem about having enough food over the winter BUT if we avoided an artificial food boost during late summer we just wouldn't have enough winter bees to carry the hive into the next spring.

When you perform anti-varroa treatments at such low temperatures (you mentioned 2 C), may I suggest oxalic acid in a sugar drip, applied by syringe on top of the winter "ball" of bees - it's worked wonders for us regarding varroa control. Google around for dosage and optimal temperature for your area; here we usually do it shortly before Christmas when there is usually a relatively warm spell (10 C-ish) so bees can fly out the next day to clear up their bowels.

I hope some of this wall of text can be useful to you

Do not know how Land you have, but here is a link to nectar flow chart, so you can plant plants that help your bees.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Northern_American_nectar_sources_for_honey_bees#Flowers,_crops,_herbs,_and_grasses

As for why they produce so much, survival, workers work themselves to death, so the hive can live on.
Worker are replaced every thirty days or so.
They work like Joseph  did for the Pharaoh & the little red hen or the ants that work all day.
To save up for hard times, honey will last forever, if it is not eaten or burned.
That is way it is important to grow plants, trees that have a good nectar flow.
Maple, Cherry, blackberry, raspberry & milkweed to name a few.
If yo use summer cover crops, Buckwheat is great for a cover crop & bees love it.
Succession planting Buckwheat up until frost date in your zone.

Leo Sharashkin:

There is actually a lot of research on what sugar-feeding does to the bees - not only it affects the current generation, but the future generation of bees as well (the bees that were still larvae when the hive was fed sugar). Leading beekeepers as far back as Georges de Layens (late 19th century, author of Keeping Bees in Horizontal Hives) have strongly been advising against sugar feeding. Thankfully, though, quite a few beekeepers do avoid feeding their bees sugar - and you may want to read Keeping Bees with a Smile: Principles and Practice of Natural Beekeeping as a powerful antidote to what they told you in the conventional beekeeping class.  Most beekeepers, though, will continue to feed their bees sugar (sugar syrup is sold in bee catalogs by the TANKER LOAD) - this is because honey is expensive, and sugar is cheap.  If you buy sugar syrup at 50 cents a pound (and feed your bees a 5-gallon bucket of that) and sell your "local honey" at the farmer's market for $10/lb, you can do the math.

Joe Grand wrote:Do not know how Land you have, but here is a link to nectar flow chart, so you can plant plants that help your bees.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Northern_American_nectar_sources_for_honey_bees#Flowers,_crops,_herbs,_and_grasses

.

Thank you Joe, especially for the Latin names. Plants have sooo many names, but when I get the Latin one,I know immediately what it is (I am a trained gardener).

I spent this week planting spring-flowering bulbs. Next spring, I have dozens of local flower seeds to plant.

Not just for the bees, I adore flowers, too 🙂

Crt Jakhel wrote:Hi Kaarina,

our
When you perform anti-varroa treatments at such low temperatures (you mentioned 2 C), may I suggest oxalic acid in a sugar drip, applied by syringe on top of the winter "ball" of bees - it's worked wonders for us regarding varroa control.

Thank you Jakhei,
We are advised to do tymol in the autumn and then oxalic in December.
The autumn was so warm, that my bees were busily flying till end of September. That is totally unusual - climate change. So I did not put in the Tymol as I feared they might still have brood. Did not want to open the hive to check, since they dislike me snooping around so much 😄.

Saralee Couchoud wrote:I would recommend checking your local area. There is usually a bee keeping group and they can answer a lot of questions and mentor you.

Dear Saralee, the adviceI got from local associations was exactly this "check all the time, switch queens, take all the honey-and-feed-them-sugar".

The advice on this forum has been brilliant and exactly what my instincts were.

Monica Strazz wrote:Hi Kaarina....I have been following Natural Beekeeping with Dr. Leo Sharashkin.  
Your place is truly a paradise on earth!  God Bless...

Thank you Monica ❤ I found his posts on permies and shared one on this very discussion.

Lina Joana wrote:
why beekeepers feed sugar - it sounds like you really do have a bee paradise! Not all of us are so lucky. My honey flow goes from April- May with poplars and locust, some clover in June, and then almost nothing in July and August. Some asters in September, but not enought. Some of that is the loss of hay fields to green lawns, but some of it is that we often get less rain than flowers in our area would like during the summer..

Thank you Joana ❤ I know I am lucky to have 10 acreas of land. I have good ssources of nectar now, and will be planting dozens of flowers next spring.

Drought is an issue - if plants do not have enough water, they will cut down nectar production. My dad complained that his flowers had no bees this summer. I asked are they suffering from lack of water (really dry this sumner - climate change) . I had him water his flowers and he reported back that they were full of bees again!  ❤

Hi Kaarina
 I have kept bees for about 7yrs and worked for a commercial beekeeper for three years before I got my first hives. I have never been on a commercial scale but the experience I had with my teacher taught me very well how to make them thrive and keep them alive over the wisconsin winters.
  We always pull most if not all the honey primarily because sugar is around 40c/lb and honey goes for 5-8$/lb. I have also noticed the sucrose syrup is easier on their gut over the winter, now pulling all the honey doesn't mean taking all the pollen, that's important for spring build up. I typically put most of the extracted frames with pollen back on and then fill them with sucrose syrup.
  I have seen people view honey harvest as a setback for the hives but in all reality not all honey is created equal. Example alphalfa honey crystallizes really bad making it a terrible winter feed. Don't feel bad about supplemental feed often times it's better than honey they have in their hive.
  Keys to success keep the mites under control, keep them fed well, and learn from your mistakes, no matter how experienced we are there's always something to learn. I have had routinely successful over winter rates of 10-30% losses. I hope you stay with it it's a rewarding experience and a really interesting hobby.