Foul, wet, rainy weather in May has put a damper on my honey harvest here in Central Pennsylvania. Could the Demaree method help improve the situation?
Great video Darren. Im glad you were able to salvage some honey. My season has been a total wash out (rain thru out April and May). In desparation, and just to know, I removed the queen excluders from a few colonies. My last hope is Mesquite and ill know if that gave me anything on Saturday. It looks like you have your own troll in the comments. Im jealous. Having trolls is a sign of YTube success!
I tried removing the excluders and the bees still wouldn't move into the honey supers, so then I did the Demaree which seemed to work. But as you can see in the comments, I'm a bad, bad beekeeper for doing so. lol! - Darren
Darren, good video. It was nice to see your hives again. With the bee population getting strong now they could fill a super in a week. It will be a pain to check to see how full the super is. But you should get some honey for sure. My honey crop is suffering also, to many windy rainy days with only a few days to forage. I maybe lucky to get half the crop I got in a drought year. UGH
Hey Russell, The Demaree's will be a pain to check but I only have a few more weeks to go. It's interesting though that my one traditional hive is doing best of all. - Darren
Glad to see another Demaree fan. But there are 2 versions of it. It sounds like you learned the Rolling Demaree. The other one is a 28 day manipulation and that's the end of it. They are both very powerful manipulations.
not a bad idea, I have mostly foundation only supers that need drawn, I am prolly gunna give this method a try to speed up drawing comb. Question, what is the big water bottles for?
Hello, the water bottles are so that I have water at the apiary for those sticky days in the supers. Also smokers in the dry summer months make me nervous, also there is a fire extinguisher in the truck. -Darren
@@PennsylvaniaBeekeeper We keep 55 gallon barrels at the bee yard and the garden to rinse my hands off when I need to. And today we added our summer guppies to the barrels. Guppies will eat mosquito larvae so it actually is supposed to cut down our mosquito problem by letting the mosquito lay eggs that will be eaten. This is also my bee watering hole so sometimes it gets interesting to rinse my hands but so far it works out. Usually we add some duckweed, water lettuce, and other top water plants so the bees have something to land on. Been doing this for several years and works out great here. Fortunately this is at my home yard so I have well water for fires, but yea, I get it for outyards.
That amount of honey happens regardless. Of anything your probably giving the queen more space to lay Your forcing them to make emergency cells and breaking up the main colony for no reason
