• BRUCE, S.D. (AP) -- South Dakota honey producer Richard Adee pulls a rectangular beehive frame from an extracting machine and points to a bell curve-shaped pattern of honey and wax.
• In a good year, the frame would be full.
• Adee Honey Farms in Bruce will extract and ship about 5 million pounds of honey this year, off from what Adee considers a good year of about 8 million pounds.
• "We're on the tail end of the summer and it's definitely going to be a short crop," he said this week.
• Adee is not alone. A month-long stretch of cooler summer temperatures in the Dakotas has honey producers anticipating a drop in the states' honey crops as extracting gets underway.
• North Dakota and South Dakota are the nation's top two honey producing states, with North Dakota churning out 34 million pounds in 2012 and South Dakota producing 17 million pounds.
• The U.S. Department of Agriculture won't release its 2013 production numbers until the spring, and there's no telling how much a short crop could affect prices at the supermarket.
• Bob Reiners, South Dakota's state apiarist, said he has taken calls from nervous producers who say they have bills to pay but not much honey in the brood boxes. The culprit appears to be mid- to late-summer temperatures that have too frequently been below normal, he said.
• "It seems to be the bulk of the honey thus far was made real early," Reiners said.
• It has been a tale of two seasons in North Dakota.
• Producers have been enjoying great conditions in the western and northern parts of the state, but eastern North Dakota has been suffering from a lack of warmth and a continuing drop in the number of nectar producing plants, said Bonnie Woodworth, director at large of the North Dakota Beekeepers Association.

(Continued on page 19)