Subject: [Part 3] These 3 Factors Have Huge Honey Harvest Impact For You! 😱

View online - Series - [Part #3] Weather & Bee Pests Have Huge Impact - Part #3

"Weather & Bee Pests Have Huge Impact - Part #3"

This is an age-old question that hits high on the frequently asked questions list... We thought we would open discussion on the topic and share our insights for your input and benefit.

It's not an easy question to answer. There are at least 14 variables we are touching on below which will have influence your harvest in a given 12-month period and beyond...

Buzz along with us on this journey. This is a series of emails. This is part 3!

What Are Your Major and Minor Honey Producing Variables When You Want To Work Out Honey Production?

6) Weather Conditions & Climate

Micro and macro climate have huge impact on your honey production.

The micro climate is localised weather such as the rain in your area or sunshine or black frost and ice for a few days. All of which will put pressure on the colony over short spans of time.

The macro climate is more regional, and even national, such as the El Nino, droughts, floods and extended periods of above and below the respective average temperature ranges such as heat waves and cold fronts.

At times, especially when colonies are on a crop or orchard, this can be a double-edge sword as the poor climate condition can cause chaos with both the bees and the source of the pollen and nectar they are foraging upon. For example, a serious hail storm can destroy a crop or badly damage it when in flower. The bees would have less to forage on and the farmer's crop yield is likely to decline dramatically.

With regards to mobile and static hives, we will discuss in a point below, some of the weather factors may be managed by you moving your hives to a new location. Either way, when bad weather takes place locally, the bees suffer. If there's a lot of rain over the flowering period where the apiary is the bees cannot forage. They simply won't and cannot fly much in the rain nor the cold weather.

Water and Heat

Rain stops foraging
Heat takes energy to deal with

Keep in mind that water washes away nectar and pollen. Some time is lost due to the wash-away effect whenever it rains. This influences the total foraging capacity on any crop in the area.

Heat has multiple impact factors too. It puts massive pressure on the internal climate control of the hive itself. More bees, that could be foraging, now need to provide cooling duties inside the hive keeping the brood and comb from overheating.

Bees can heat up or cool their internal climate. Their micro climate of the hive. Firstly, bees eat honey or nectar for energy. Secondly, they heat the hive by huddling and clustering together, vibrating their wing muscles. This generates heat! They also use this technique in defense against pests and attackers. Hive beetles and hornets are also killed in this manner. Even the queen can be 'cooked' by the workers in a 'revolt' in a practice called 'balling'.

They can also, in a few days, build propolis walls, like a trellis, that keeps control over the flow of cold air into the hive making it easier to keep warm. This also helps defenders keep pests at bay while the propolis also acts as a anti-microbial 'welcome mat' for returning foragers. Propolis is also the bee cement or glue that is used to make the internal space air tight.

When it's hot, bees use moisture to cool the colony down. They will bring water into the hive and use it to help cool the temperature as well as the moisture from unripe nectar which starts off at about 80% and gets reduced over time to an average of about 18% - but ranges from as low as 16% and as high as 24% depending on your location and the type of nectar. The workers then fan the moisture around the colony dispersing the heat like an air conditioner.

How does this impact honey production?

All of the above requires energy. This leads to:

Fewer workers foraging
More resources being utilised (nectar)
Decrease in honey storage

Good management, with high quality bee hives that help with insulation, has a vast effect on your result over a season.

Let's move on to the effect cold has.

How Does Cold Weather Effect Your Bees & Honey?

When the outside temperature falls below about 9% Celsius honeybees can no longer fly as their wing muscles cease up. If there is prolonged poor weather below this temperature they have a number of factors to contend with:

They can't forage
They consume honey / unripe nectar for energy
They need to stay warm
The queen is likely to lay fewer eggs
Frost and black frost can damage any forage that was available causing the flowers to die
If they do not have enough food your colony will starve and die

You can feed your bees sugar water using only white sugar with a teaspoon of lemon to keep it from fermenting. This would be a 1:1 solution mix with 1 kilogram of white sugar with 1 Litre of water to keep calculations easy. Patties can be fed too but only if the bees are lacking pollen stores. (We stock a protein feed.)

There are different types of feeding methods: internal and external. If it is that cold that bees cannot fly anyway, internal works best. I usually default to internal feeding myself or at the next best thing, entrance feeding.

Available Feeders: (click for products)

entrance feeders
internal feeder frames
lid feeders
outside feeders

We discussed in part #1 of the series how location influences the outside temperature for your bees. In the sun or the shade, in the valley or the peak or middle of the land and the direction the hive faces all have micro and macro effects on your apiary.

Likewise, being able to move your colonies in times of drought, flood and heat waves may result in higher transport costs but save you having to prepare other management steps for them such as feeding, experiencing losses and even damaged or destroyed bee hives.

Fire is also another issue. With many wild fires being broadcast across media it highlights that this is also a factor of climate and storms can generate lightening. Dry bush and veld is easier to catch alight. Prepare fire breakers at your apiary to manage this risk.

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7) Mobile or Static Apiary

One of the biggest factors to influence your production of honey, when combined with our other factors, is in the ability to easily transport your apiary to multiple locations. This is also interred by the choice of your bee hive design too...

Langstroth, BeePak and Dadant hives are easily transportable and compartmentalised
Top bar hives and cement bee bunka hives are harder to transport

Langstroth originally conceptualised the design in order to allow for interchangeability and are component-based. The brood and super chambers make up compartments. These make it easier to dismantle and transport in parts. Unlike any competitors.

A static apiary is fixed. This means the bees are limited to the available forage capacity within a diameter of up to 5km from the hive. Typically, foragers have an ideal efficiency range for large established colonies of up to 1.25km while smaller colonies prefer about 750m.

It quickly becomes apparent if you take a walk around your apiary counting trees, flowers, plants and weeds to gain an understanding of your forage quality for pollen and nectar sources that you may be limiting your apiary's ability to produce honey simply by their location and thereby limited access to ample forage.

Crop Chasers! © Bee Ware 2022

With mobile colonies in Langstroth, Dadant and BeePak hives it is easier to transport your bees to 'greener pastures' as the apiary's foraging resources have bloomed and now no longer provide food.

Crop Chasers will follow the natural chronological blooming schedule of crops, trees and other honey forage throughout the season. Sunflowers, for example, can be chased from Bloemfontein to Levubu in Limpopo (South African cities about 900km or 560m) over about four to six months. Pesticides and transport handling between locations aside, this sunflower chasing can be lucrative. There is the matter of theft and vandalism in new apiary sites. Please take precautions.

We have mobile honey extractors that can be set up to harvest honey on site with some additional MacGyver work like an adapted van or truck. A fixed or static apiary site using Top Bar hives, Cement Bunka hives and Jackson hives can be moved however at much greater effort requiring at least two people to load and offload. They become very heavy.

An alternative idea to chasing sunflowers could be Crop Hopping! Again, mobile ability here is key as efficiency is ultimately going to result in healthier bees and higher honey production.

Crop Hopping (© Bee Ware 2022) is when beekeepers move from one crop or nectar source to another throughout the season. You know that different fruits and nuts and plants flower at different times of the season within a year and bees can be relocated to take advantage of this opportunity at the cost of transport and labour.

Crop Hopping (© Bee Ware 2022) can mean you are starting off with oranges blossoms, then macadamia followed by sunflower followed by litchi/lychee then by avocado and then by macadamia again. Each of these cases would require transport, labour, healthy bees and the ability to harvest and extract the honey. The honey would also likely be mono-culture being mostly from one crop / source and therefore can be labeled as such.

Many honey conscientious consumers are well aware of the premium of some of these types of honey varietals as they are very different to those found in the retail chain shops. Orange blossom honey usually carries a premium price due to its sweetness, it's amazing taste and scent.

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8) Pests

Ants are likely the worst pest in Southern Africa. Diatomaceous earth can be used away from the bees to manage ants. There are bee pirates too. And wasps.

Wax moths usually enter a hive when a colony is already in some form of decline or at a weak phase. Their larvae will eat the wax comb when they emerge.

Take care to inspect and take action on pests as they too can lead to your colony absconding.

Varroa mites are a more common problem nowadays around the world. They've managed to somehow travel across seas to all continents. Asian Hornets are a growing threat as well.

Small hive beetles, endemic to Africa, have now also found their way to Europe, Australia and USA. African bees have lived with this pest since they both came about. They do eventually wear the colony down if not managed when found in high numbers.

Varroa mites are also generally well managed by African colonies however research has shown that over time, the colony does have a decline in overall productivity. Oxalic Acid spray is one treatment that is used in the northern hemisphere. I refer to them as bee ticks.

Another natural treatment, which requires good knowledge and experience of bee farming, is the drone brood frame method. Mites like to enter brood cells before they are sealed and then feed on the larvae. By placing a super frame in the brood chamber of a Langstroth hive the bees draw out drone comb. Mites will enter these cells and after they are sealed the entire frame can be removed and the comb destroyed.

South African Hive Innovation Amidst Langstroth Favour

There's the Bee Pak hive, which won the Popular Mechanic Invention of the Year 2014 competition of R1 million and was designed by a Cape Town based beekeeping duo. A composite bee hive with interlocking components making it fire resistant and a very long lifespan.

The Bee Bunka, which is a low-cost, low weight, concrete-based hive which is available with moulds to mix and make your own on site at your apiary. It's fire proof and badger resistant. As with the Bee Pak, the Bee Bunka frames are interchangeable with Langstroth ones.

The Jackson Hive, designed and developed by the Jackson family and used extensively in North Africa is based on Kenyan top bar hive design with distinct innovations that benefit the inner workings of a wild natural colony. Tim Jackson passed away about a decade ago and the hive stopped being produced.

All of these are locally innovated and developed bee hives in South Africa regardless that the industry is locked into the Langstroth hive as the Godfather of bee hives.

I've met with all of these designers and tested their products. There's much to be said for their ability to compete and in some cases, within parameters like location and needs, they show a great opportunity for outdoing the Langstroth Hive. After all, the Langstroth design hasn't enjoyed much innovation since the 1950s. I will do a special side series on these in the coming weeks...

We supply Bee Bunka and Bee Pak hives from our shop in Centurion.

*Jackson hives may be available upon request for minimum orders of 20 units.

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More to follow in the series: Weather. Mobile or static hive? Your management or pests, brood space & Supers. Method of extraction. Starter strips or full wax sheets used?

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