When the initial 16 nuc colonies of Golden Cordovan honey bees arrived at Hokkaido Ranch in April, we knew it would be a while before we could harvest honey for resale.
Because you want your beehives to grow strong, it typically takes a year to build them up.
However, the wet spring with lots of wildflowers made it possible for us to do a small harvest this week of 11 frames from two hives’ honey supers ( Hive #2 and Hive #4). Extraction from these frames yielded a total of 1.5 gallons of amber-colored Texas pure honey.
We left the rest of the honey for the bees. This will help them survive the current dearth (lack of flowers) until Snow on the Praire and other wildflowers begin blooming in August.
In addition, we are supplemental feeding the hives to help them build up food stores for the winter months.
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