When do
bees produce honey?
When do
I harvest honey?
How many
times do I harvest honey in a year?
All the
above questions are commonly asked by people who want to join beekeeping after
getting excited by the trainings or news they get from beekeepers.
Well
from my point of understanding, all the questions mean one thing or I summarise
them into one statement and this is: A beekeeping calendar.
With the
beekeeping calendar, the following are considered:-
1.
Climate
2.
Colony
population and strength
3.
Floral
blossoms
Climate the general weather conditions
usually found in a particular place ie dry or wet [rainy season or drought].
Therefore during the wet weather, there is rainfall which brings water to
provide nourishment to plants which grow and produce flowers. And during the
dry weather condition, all the plants are affected and usually there is no
growth and no flowers but not to all plants though.
So this
element is very important to consider when you are keeping bees.
Colony
population is the total number of bees available in a single hive. Usually a
strong bee hive should contain roughly 50,000 bees and on average depending on
the size of the beehive since a bigger hive contains more bees and a small hive
contains less bees.
Therefore
the more bees available in a beehive ensure a big accomplishment of activities
in the hive which include collecting nectar to produce honey.
So during
the nectar flow, more bees will store more honey and lesser bees will store
less honey and the less honey will almost be for the new born babies leaving
the beekeeper with nothing to harvest! But a strong and big colony will collect
a lot of nectar and store a lot of honey enough for the babies that will hatch
and surplus for the beekeeper to harvest.
The last
thing to note here is the condition of the hive. Bees with a lot of troubles
from pests, leaking hive and diseases could not perform to your expectations!
Blossom. When a tree or plant
blossoms, it produces flowers before producing fruits which can be eaten by man
and this is what bees need to collect nectar which they store to produce honey.
Therefore bees collect nectar from flowers; “where there are no flowers, there is
no nectar and no honey in the end”. During the flowering stage, bees visit the
flowers everyday to collect nectar to store in the comb cells which turns into
honey after a series of processes. Normally honey is available towards the end
of flowering or two weeks after flowering season (well capped honey).
Want honey? Wait for
flowers to provide nectar for your bees to process honey for you.
Calendar
Since we have seen the
elements to bring together to understand a bee-keeping calendar, now let us
make one.
A calendar is made up of
12months.
Month
|
Jan
|
Feb
|
Mar
|
Apr
|
May
|
June
|
July
|
Aug
|
Sept
|
Oct
|
Nov
|
Dec
|
Climate
|
dry
|
dry
|
dry/wet
|
wet
|
wet
|
wet
|
dry
|
Dry/wet
|
wet
|
wet
|
wet
|
Dry
|
Blossom
|
No/yes
|
no
|
no
|
yes
|
yes
|
No/yes
|
no
|
no
|
no
|
yes
|
yes
|
no
|
Activity
|
Food/ nectar
|
food
|
Build -up
|
Build-up
|
Collect nectar
|
food
|
food
|
Build-up
|
Build-up
|
Collect nectar
|
food
|
food
|
Honey
|
no
|
Yes/no
|
No/yes
|
no
|
no
|
yes
|
yes
|
No/yes
|
no
|
Yes/no
|
yes
|
no
|
Key:
A. Climate
Dry – no
rainfall at all
Wet –
there is rain
No/yes –
Rainfall starts
B. Blossom
[flowers which provide nectar and pollen to bees]
Yes -
means the flowers are available
No - means
there are no flowers
Yes/no -
means there could be some flowers or not depending on the climate and
availability of some plants like coffee, mangoes which flower during the dry
seasons.
C. Activity
[the bees are involved in]
1. Food –
bees collect food from fields for themselves. They don’t store it since it is
not enough and remember there are few or no flowers.
2. Collecting
nectar
During
this period, bees are collecting a lot of nectar to store and produce honey.
And this is due to a lot of blossom in the fields and nourished plants by rainfall.
Usually when there is enough nectar for bees to collect, the queens also lay a
lot of eggs to produce more bees which sometimes leads to “swarming” when the population
becomes too big to fit in the existing nest.
3. Build –
up. During this period, the queen lays a lot of eggs to rear new bees to
replace the lost number during the long dry period and also to produce more
workforces.
D. Honey
No – No
honey
Yes –
There is honey
Yes/no –
could be some honey depending on the blossom and climate ie coffee flowers
could be available to provide some nectar.
Summary
Bees do
their activities depending on the weather condition. When there is no enough
nectar in the fields (dry period) the queen stop laying eggs to produce new
bees. So when rain start, after a couple of weeks; plants are nourished, crops
are grown and eventually they start to blossom and the bees will begin visiting
the flowers to collect pollen and nectar. At this stage, the queen will start
to lay eggs to produce more bees to restore the declined population and
workforce and this phase is normally called the build-up phase.
Hey!! Know
we are honey thieves because the bees store honey as their food to eat during
drought and feed their new born babies. So keep inspecting your bees to see
when they have honey and if you find enough for the bees and you then you walk
with it.
We left the school room for the cooking fire where the beeswax
was melted over an open fire. It is dangerous to work with beeswax and an open
fire but this group is aware of how flammable beeswax is. I also melt my
beeswax over an open (propane) fire and never leave it alone in case of fire.
