Drowning in honey

There are worse problems to have :)

http://westernbee.com/pages/beehive.html

My bee setup is basically what's shown in the picture above; I don't use a hive stand - I use shipping pallets so I can pick up the hives and move them with equipment, and I haven't ever needed to use a queen excluder, but some folks do.  

This year has been really good for the bees.  Hot weather and good blooms for most everything that they like.  I started the year with 4 hives, now have 8 due to swarms, and I'm pulling the honey supers off the hives.

Every hive has produced honey this year; even those that started as packages and then swarmed.  The lowest producing hive was at 2 gallons of honey, the highest producing hive between 6 and 7 gallons (each!).

So my eight hives have produced 22.5 gallons of honey, which doesn't sound like a lot until you go to
bottle it - I've produced 17 cases of half pint and pint jars so far, and still have honey to go.

The weather has been cooperative - hot and sunny (with the occasional eclipse), so opening the hives and working with the bees has been relatively easy.

There's still some honey to be gathered out there, and I'm pulling the honey now by swapping empty for full.  I'll pull the honey supers off of the hives when it cools down in september so that the bees have a smaller area to keep warm during the winter.