2020…what a year of surprises; and no less so than in my little apiary.  For the first time in my 4 years of beekeeping, I actually had too much honey!  That is to say, too much honey for one hive.  One can NEVER have too much honey, right? The one hive I had left going into Summer was so super productive that by fall it was honey bound, meaning not enough space for the queen to lay brood. Incredible.  Here is a summary of my beekeeping steps throughout the summer and into fall:

• Moved hive to a sunnier spot. The previous location was decent, but thought I’d try a change to see if it would produce better results. Can’t say it was THE reason for a great honey season, but it didn’t hurt.

• Kept feeding sugar syrup throughout the summer simply because they kept eating it up.  In past years, various hives would stop consuming the syrup come the blackberry flow, but not this hive. No doubt it gave them plenty of energy for supporting the various functions of the hive. Note, they do not use if for making honey.

• Put the Super and Queen Excluder on in mid-July.  For those unfamiliar with those terms, it means I put on another box with frames on top of the already 3-box stack for the bees to store honey. The queen excluder sandwiched in between pretty much guarantees that will be its only purpose as the queen can’t get through the narrow grid to lay her eggs.

• Learned a new tip! When moving and/or setting aside bee-filled boxes, put the inner cover on top to keep the little critters from buzzing around and getting in the way. Seems so obvious, but it didn’t occur to me until my mentor, Kathy, mentioned it.

• Checked for mites in August using the alcohol wash method – and found none!  That changed, however, by October.

• So many bees by September! And increasingly defensive as the season wore on.  I usually work the bees bare-handed, but come harvest time, had to put the gloves on to avoid repeated stings. Ouch! Also, seemed too late to split the hive heading into the cooler months. With a bit of luck, I’ll be able to do so come spring.

• By fall, the super as well as the rest of the hive was really FULL of honey and bees. Harvested 17 frames of honey! At an average of 3-5 lbs of honey per frame, that’s the most I’ve ever collected from a hive, or even two!

• Tried a fume board to kick off the harvesting process.  That is basically a method that uses an organic bee repellent (smelly to them, not so much to humans) to encourage the girls to move off the honey super and further down into the hive.  Was marginally successful. Maybe I needed to wait longer.  Patience has never been my strong suit.

• Thanks to help from Kathy, I learned that uncapped honey that doesn’t drip out is safe to harvest.

• Replaced frames with unfilled drawn comb frames in the middle of each box for the queen to lay winter brood.  Drawn comb means the wax structure is already in place, as opposed to empty frames that require the bees to make fresh comb, an energy-intensive process not helpful going into winter.

• Prepped the hive for winter. Removed the honey super entirely; and checked but didn’t need to reverse any of the boxes as the brood chamber was still on the bottom. That’s the position one wants when cold weather starts, as the bee cluster will gradually move upward for warmth.

• Meant to check for mites in September but couldn’t seem to pull it off between weather, family commitments, a trip to the San Juans (ah, so lovely), and the lazy assumption that everything was fine given the last test. So wrong.  After inspecting the bottom board in October, I was dismayed to see mites, too many of them :(  Arghhh! Tried an apiguard treatment in hopes that their interior temperature of 93 degrees would help with the dispersal, but it didn’t work well. The ambient temperature was already too cold. Fingers-crossed, I can place a successful treatment in the spring.

• With the colder temps in October, it was time to remove the syrup feeder and set up the Vivaldi Board for winter and dry sugar feeding.  Harder to do than I expected. Was like harvesting honey, the bees were so defensive. Afterwards, placed pine shavings around the inner screen and covered the interior with a nice little burlap blanket. 

• Also in preparation for winter, I strapped insulation board around three sides of the hive, plus on the top cover.  Then set up a rain fly over it all to help keep out rain and snow from the entrances.

• Crossed fingers for this strong hive to make it through the winter and into spring!

Hope this summary helps you on your bee journey.  If you are keeping bees, don’t hesitate to share your own adventures in apiculture!