Tell me about the honey...

[Neils]

This year is all up in the air. Down in the balmy tropics we're alternating between 24+ degree weather and monsoon.

The brambles are done, the beans are still out, there still appears to be stacks of forage around and I'm in two minds whether to take the honey off or give them another super for a week or two more. I'm going away at the end of august so my intention is that come what may they'll have thymol treatments started for those two weeks, it feels like early july round these parts at the moment.

While there is heather round these parts I'm not intending to move any hives there and I dont want to push thymol treatments into mid october.

[gavin]

Spare a thought for your northern bretheren vacillating between waiting longer for lowland (lime, clover, willowherb) supers to be completed and dashing to the hills for the heather which is now reputed to be out! Tonight the car played up, so I abandoned thoughts of doing it tonight hence my availability to blether on the forum.

[Neils]

Far as I can tell the heather round here is starting too, there's just no sign at the moment that the current flow is letting up. Though the Ivy is also starting.

[Rosie]

I'm taking some to the heather in the morning. I've been torn between leaving them here for the first flow of the season or taking them to the heather but I decided in the end to take 7 colonies and leave the rest here. I use this move every year to rearrange my apiaries so that I always end up with the purest ones in my home/breeding apiary. Hence I take the duds from home and the best of the out apiary ones.

I am told the heather is about to come out although looking up from the valleys to the heathery mountain tops it looks to be a good few days from flowering. I will know better in the morning when I can get a closer look. Last year the flow came at the beginning of the flowering period and then stopped in its tracks so I don't want to miss the start.

Steve

[Bridget]

I am surrounded by heather. Last year was my first and had only just got my first colony. This year I have one hive with supers on. As it was part of a Demaree with a queen which has not long been laying I only have a few frames half full of capped honey. Should I leave these on and let the bees fill them up with heather honey or take what there is and put on new frames? There are plenty of stores in the brood box. this is not yet a hive full of bees but full enough to justify the super.

[gavin]

Its up to you Bridget. Take them if you'd like to sample the honey from before the flowering of the heather and if the honey is matured rather than watery. Firing up an extractor for a few uncapped frames doesn't make a lot of sense but perhaps you can scrape it off and strain it.

Thin unwired foundation for your heather crop (if you get one!) means that you can use it as cut comb. Otherwise you need to either scrape off the heather honey and press, or agitate it so that you can spin it out. In its native state it is like a jelly and will not come out with normal spinning.

[Jon]

Seems to be a flow on here from the balsam as almost every bee is white.
Not sure if the supers are gaining much weight as the brood boxes are starting to fill with more honey.
I have 2 or 3 drone combs in most brood boxes and I have moved these to the back for honey storage as the queens have mostly stopped laying drone eggs now.