Honey Production

When to Harvest?

Beginning beekeepers should not expect to get an actual harvest the first year, but may be able to take a few pounds of honey on a good year. A starter colony is akin to getting a puppy, or a better analogy may be more like getting a baby milk cow. A yearling calf is not expected to produce milk until she matures. The same expectation should apply to a young colony of honey bees. They need to grow and build their numbers to become a mature productive hive.

We budget to feed our starter colonies so they grow fast and make new comb for brood production and honey storage in the future. Since building comb requires a lot of extra resources, when we are in a dearth we feed constantly and like to push them hard to grow the first year.

Staying Put or Moving

For small scale stationary honey production, meaning roughly less than a dozen hives that are not going to be moved around, the available resources in the area are the limiting factor. If there's not much rain, there may not be much honey that season. The migratory hives are moved a few times a year, chasing the Nectar Flow, but even those are dependent on ample rainfall or irrigation systems. No promises in farming, other than, it's a lot like work.

The mobile hives are transported to areas with a Nectar Flow in progress or about to take place. Normally a Queen Excluder is placed above the top box of the doubles and another box is added for honey storage. This is known as "supering" the hives and where the name, Honey Super, came from for the box going above the excluder. Multiple Supers may be required for each hive on a good flow.

A honey super can be any size box, but most beekeepers us the medium size boxes for supers because they are only about 60lbs when full of honey versus a deep with 10 frames of honey weighing closer to 90lbs.

Average Production

How much honey does a hive produce a year?

That number varies as much as the weather and it is often tied directly to the amount of moisture the weather provides. An average hive should produce between 30 and 50 pounds of excess honey during a good year, up to a hundred or more on a very good year with a very strong colony.

Conversely, bees can and will consume a hundred pounds or more of sugar syrup in years of drought. It's like any other farming... not every year is good and not every year is bad.

... more to come...

Bulk Honey

We are sold out for the 2025 season. For smaller quantities of honey from our area, please visit the Local Honey page for more information.

We recommend visiting the Honey Fraud page for information related to purchasing pure unadulterated honey. Educating the public about the difference in real and fake honey is very important to the future of beekeeping in America, so please take a moment to review and share with others the information available.

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