They do not use chemicals to take off honey. Everyone uses an escape board. All colonies are strapped to the pallet with metal bands and tightened with a special clip. They anticipated that this year s crop would be a record of more than 600 lbs per colony. That s a drum of honey per hive.
Beekeepers there appear to be prospering.
Each of these outfits run between 1,500 and 2,500 colonies. In addition each has around 1,000 sheep and one has 100 beef cows. All of the equipment that I saw was very modern, both in the field and the honey house. Both used an automatic load and unload vertical extractor, one made in the US by Cowen and the other made there. Both uncappers were made there and were similar to the Cowen.