The rainy, cool weather we had about a month ago apparently has severely affected the Wildflower spring nectar flow. The mainstay of the spring honey crop in this area is the Tulip Poplar tree. During its bloom the rainy, windy weather accompanied by cool temperatures either prevented the bees from flying to gather the nectar, washed the nectar away or blew the blossoms off the trees.
The end result is that my bees put up only one fourth to one half the honey they normally put up this time of year. I have talked to a number of other beekeepers in the area and they report the same thing. In fact, one of them has one of his hives on a platform scale. He records the weight gain and loss on a daily basis and reports it to the USDA in Beltsville, MD for their study purposes. He said that the hive this year weighed 100 pounds less than the same time in 2008. Last year I harvested approximately 1400 pounds of local wildflower and this year I think I will be lucky to get 600 pounds. So it looks like the local spring Wildflower honey crop is going to be in short supply. This all serves to remind us that this is really farming and you have your good years and your lean years.
Last week after taking off the honey supers, I moved 13 colonies up to our property in North Carolina to join the bees already there and to hopefully capture the Sourwood nectar flow and to finish building up some of the new colonies I started this year. We’ll see how that goes and I will report on it sometime later this month. Below are a couple of pictures of my friend and fellow beekeeper Jim McClure opening up the hive entrances we had closed off for the move and the hives in place with their supers ready to capture the Sourwood honey. 
The remaining hives here in Alpharetta all appear to be relatively strong and the brood chambers, where the queen lives and they raise their young, have plenty of bees and nectar stored for now. That may change as the usual summer dearth (lack of nectar flow) arrives in July. I am going to have to watch them carefully and feed them a mixture of sugar and water to tide them over until the fall wild flower bloom again produces honey for the bees’ winter stores.
Tags: 2009 Wildflower harvest, Sourwood honey, Wildflower honey
Mike,
I have experienced the same thing you have. During the Poplar bloom here in the Eatonton area we had high winds 24/7. The Poplar trees had the best bloom I’ve seen in years, but most of the nectar served only to gloss the leaves! We made about 40% of the norm. Thank goodness we also have an abundance of Blackgum Tupelo. The Blackgum was a goodly percentage of the normal spring harvest.
In June we normally get a decent little flow from sumac this year it was about 2X normal. We also had a very clear nectar at this time (June 5-19) with a citrus like taste that I’ve not been able to identify. Paul Arnold is going to do a pollen analysis for me. If it wasn’t for this “gush” we would have been super short on wildflower honey for our customers.
The Sourwood was really good in Townes Co. from June 23 through July 4. The bees filled 1 to 1.5 supers in that 10 day period. Heavy rains and gloomy weather pretty much stomped out the rest of the harvest. As of Saturday the 18th of July my bees are eating still uncapped sourwood…
Bob Binnie reports a very short sourwood harvest in Rabun County and none in other areas.
Farming and Apiculture are always a gamble with Mother Nature holding all the cards!