With the house fire last year we weren’t able to check on the hives as regularly as we would like. We lost them over the winter. We bought a single nuc this year to try to get the apiary going again, not really planning to extract. The girls went to work though. They filled up 2 and a half medium sized, 10 frame supers. We left some for them, and extracted 5 gallons in late June. It is beautiful, light honey.
Maybe someday we’ll have dozens of hives, and gallons and gallons of honey, but for now we are a small operation so we settled on 12 oz bottles for $8.
We’ve been checking the hive consistently and it is very strong. This is the best queen we’ve had in years. No swarm cells. A solid, consistent brood pattern, and friendly bees. I haven’t been stung once all year. I’m optimistic that the hive will do well over the winter and I can split it early next Spring. I’ll probably buy another nuc as well and slowly ramp back up. For now, we have one strong hive, and a few gallons of raw, local honey. Let us know if you want some.