Bless you and your bees. We need 'em!
Stig
I started keeping bees back in 2010, got them for pollination, couldn't even grow zucchinis. I had no clue how much honey they could produce, 2011, the first year we harvested honey, we took 25 gallons, still leaving em 10-15 for winter, not all years have been that good. You should have seen our Cortland apple tree, barely producing, to bushels, garden the best I ever had
fwiw, not much is involved in keeping bees, less than man 40hrs work / year / hive. as a team, the Mrs & I each do about half, some of the work is in the kitchen, making sugar water to feed em when flowers are not blossoming, spinning honey in our extractor, or just inspecting the hive, bees forage up to 2 miles from the hive, you could even keep a hive on the roof of a 50 story building in a city, assuming local zoning allows it
my next adventure will be vermiculture