Summer Moon of the First Harvests
As you will see in the picture below, the colony now has six honey supers. This means beekeeping is over until the honey harvest since I won’t add more supers and I don’t inspect the hives during the nectar flow.
This year we plan to pay close attention to the varroe mites and treat them if necessary. I hope that will increase the likelihood of this colony surviving the winter, giving me two colonies for next spring. I have a new site picked out for the bees. It has southern exposure, protection from the northwest winter winds and is close to the honey house. I will move the hive in the winter though I plan to prepare the site in the fall. My goal going forward will be to keep four hives, two parent colonies (honey producers) and two colonies for overwintering, then dividing in the spring.
