This years honey crop was a bust. Amber and I started this spring with essentially 4 hives. One carried over from last year and we were really hopeful this one would have the colony population to produce the honey. Two hives where new nucleolus purchases this year. The fourth hive was a swarm I captured in The Villages and ordered an emergency hive body for. 
As it sits now we have two hives left. The hive that carried over from last year all died in a sticky soupy mess inside the hive. It almost looked like things overheated and melted. I'm not sure if that is the case or if the bees died from another cause and the melted mess is what happens to an untended hive. 
The captured hive, despite my best efforts and capturing the swarm again, flew the coop. They drew out comb on a few frames and then decided this wasn't the hive for them.
So interestingly enough the two hives that are still here both have mesh screen bottoms while the hive that died and abandoned had solid wood bottoms. Coincidence? I can't be certain. This is my first season with screen bottom hives so after this winter I will formulate my opinion.
All this being said the only two hives that survived are new this year. I was trying to be optimistic that they would be able to produce a little surplus honey but they didn't. I pulled a few frames from the hives only to realize that they were full of brood. Which is a good thing for future population growth but not for extracting honey. I did keep one frame with an isolated patch of brood and manually extracted the honey. It was only enough to fill 3.5 cup sized mason jars. I also think there might be a small flavor or taste linked to honey around brood cells that I am not a fan of.
Hopefully next year theses two hive will have maxed out their populations and I can throw on top boxes with a queen excluder and really get some pure delicious honey.
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