Sunday, September 27, 2009

Fall Harvest

Today I extracted the honey from my 4 hives today. Actually only 3 of the hives had enough to extract but I ended up with 3.5 gallons. I made sure to leave the hives with plenty of honey for the winter as well. We are having a major blooming of flowers here in La and the bees are working like crazy. I think they still have time to replenish what I took. The honey was somewhat darker than the spring honey and I thought it would not be as sweet, but I was wrong, this darker honey is actually smoother tasting and sweeter for some reason. So far this is the best honey I have ever tasted from my hives. I also took 2 frames of brood/honey/and bees from my best hive and added it to my new nuc hive, the queen will arrive this week and I will introduce her to her new nuc. I hope I am able to keep it through the winter. I have plenty of honey to feed the nuc. This weekend I mounted my John Deere and plowed several acres of my tree farm land and I planted a white clover for the bees next spring. I do not know much about the clover but it is suppose to have a large white flowering head. The type of clover is called Ladino.

2 comments:

Lynn said...

One of the hardest things I'm having to learn is whether to leave honey for the bees or to feed with sugar syrup and for how long.... There seems to be no firm answer to this question. I'm like you, I have plenty of honey to leave and that's what I'm doing. I guess a lot of it depends on whether you want to take the honey for personal use or sell it. Anyway, I could go on, but I think you can understand my confusion.

Sounds like you have a long growing and beekeeping season in LA. Mine are both very short here in the mountains of NC. I hope you'll post some temps during the fall and winter months.

Paul said...

Ok I'll do that. The low temp tonight is 55 and the high temp is 80 tomorrow.