Brett, it makers me happy for you and Katie to have such a great harvest on the horizon! 10k lbs is a great accomplishment and I hope you exceed that. There’s no telling how much wax that you will harvest? I hope you have a very large extractor or two and hopefully you will have some extra help to pull and extract all of those boxes of liquid gold!
Up until last year, we had a 3 frame hand crank extractor. Last fall we spent two full weeks extracting honey with that thing, and vowed to get a better extractor before this year's harvest. So yeah, we bought an 18 frame electric from our old bee mentor, I'm psyched to put it to use.
I have been watching you two for a while now everything looks GREAT . BUT ONE THING . When are you going to purchase Katie her very own smoker . With great help like that . GET HER A SMOKER . Lol , lol , lol . We really enjoy the video’s. Thanks
lol, there is a second smoker in the back of that truck, I swear to you. Usually when we're doing really intrusive stuff she'll light it, but when it's less intrusive like just adding boxes we share.
Wish I would get some honey for myself this year, I kept saying no more splitting well the other day I put some nucs into 8 frame equipment and kept two brood frames in the nuc box and pulled some frames out of my other colonies to creat 5 more nucs and a 8 frame give body with 4 frames of brood. Now for sure I am done splitting and have no choice to let them build up noticed some grass leaved goldenrod blooming, am hoping they all have time to bounce back and put lots of weight on.
@@BKBees the ones making queens are in nucs so should be easy getting some weight on them with feeding, the ones I took the splits out of have a lot of brood and I am feeding them so they can draw out comb fast no Sooner they get a frame started the queen is laying it up, all 5 of them come out of the nuc boxes and each 8 frame hive had 6 frames of brood so in the next 3 weeks they are going to explode just in time for the goldenrod to hit, am seeing some of the early goldenrod now, one thing I have to my advantage I think is 100's of acres of alfalfa in bloom right now and it will more than likely have a chance to bloom two more times before first frost, then lots of soybean starting to bloom. So I am hoping they pack on some weight from that in the next few weeks. Will see, if they are not heavy by mid September I will start feeding them, would do it mid August but here in pa we seem to be deer hunting in t shirts until mid November. My only thing is now trying to figure out when to start the apivar for winter bees.
No more super going on here in Iowa we have barely had rain the last two months. Lots of beekeepers thinking that their hives are failing because bees have shut down.
I have harvest honey twice this year and I have got two five gallon buckets twice off one hive and one buck off the other ones is that about normal and is there a reason one with cap on faster than the other ones
That's a lot of honey. More than the average hive, well done. Yeah, some bees cap faster than others. Welcome to the unending honey season struggle, lol.
Brett, No none seems to worry about contaminating honey with that which we feed bees in the spring - sugar syrup. I had one frame this morning that just looked thick and dark. Made me nervous. I took it back out to the yard. Can/does this ever become a problem?
Nah, I don't think it's an issue if you're feeding in the spring before supers are on. No syrup will end up in those supers, they're going to use it to build up.
A mixture. Mostly wholesale by the bucket to beekeepers and by the case to stores, but we sell some to individuals and every once in a while we'll join a farmer's market or something.
I actually have one plastic lid somewhere in my operation. Not sure where it's at but I like it. It's solid, light, no sharp edges. If the price is right, go for it.
I have a question I ordered some Queens and I haven't received them yet I have asked for the tracking number three or more times I still have not got it got a text back saying that he looked it up and they said it was delivered Friday and I asked for the tracking number again that way I could go to the Post office at least find out where they went still haven't received the tracking number is that normal practice with a queen breeder that sells Queen just curious
Nope that is not normal, Foley's Russians in Iowa sends tracking in your receipt email. They also have the post office call you for pick up immediately. Butts's bees out of Georgia and Mike's bees and honey out of Minnesota where the same way.
No, that's not cool. I'd be adamant about wanting that tracking number. When we ship queens I always send out pictures of the receipt right after I drop them off at the post office.
@@BKBees honey really gets in your way I tried to set up where they wouldn't make much but they proved one thing they do what they want to do and allow us to watch
OK, just so you know I will be counting minutes with versus minutes without Katie. If she does not get enough screen time I will ask you to honor your double-your-money-back guarantee.
First of all, you in shorts…again. Lol. Second, you’ve never talked about the business end of it that I’m aware of, but what do you do with 10,000 pounds of honey? Do you sell it in 55 gallon barrels? Jar it and sell it in stores? Or farmers market’s? That’s a s-load of honey.
Yeah, be prepared for more shorts videos, it's hot, lol. We bottle and sell as much that way as we can, we (in the lower peninsula) supply a few different stores, we'll be looking for more stores up here as well. That's the best money, but it can mean sitting on honey for a long time, allowing it to crystallize, such a pain. The last couple of years we've sold the vast majority of it in 5 gallon buckets, mostly to other beekeepers who are looking to supply a larger customer base than their personal honey harvest allows. We sell 'em for something like $220 a bucket, so, less money per pound than selling it by the jar to stores, but only by a small amount. This year, who knows what we'll do. What I do know is my parent's basement will have a lot more space this fall, as we had been storing buckets of honey there for the last bunch of years. I have my own basement for storage now, lol.
