We are so excited to see that we have some honey on packages installed this spring. We haven’t gotten to all the apiaries yet, but our Jerome bees certainly took advantage of the excellent forage around. It looks like we will have to do some extracting soon to prevent hives getting honey bound.
Honey bound is when a hive has been so successful foraging that they have filled all their frames with honey leaving not enough room for new brood. We see this especially when you have big flows like we do here in Central Illinois. Forage fluctuates quite a bit here in Central Illinois and bees really go to town during the times when nectar flows freely. Having a honey-bound hive is easy enough to address by adding more space (frames for more comb) and harvesting (extracting) honey.