Ready for Winter??

A beautiful Indian summer has come to an end. We had a gorgeous October with mid-afternoon temps getting up to the 60s and no hard frosts until just last week.

See how low the angle of the sun is getting? Well, take my word for it... This is facing south.

The nice weather made it possible to feed the bees sugar syrup to boost up their food stores. They were bringing on pollen all month long too. I don't think they're quite as heavy as they were last year, but the the top boxes are full of honey. I've been working hard on getting them healthy too. They have Apivar strips in right now because the mite counts were still high after the Formic strips back in September. I think the night time temps were too low for the Formic to work. Fortunately, the last sugar shake I did showed a dramatic drop in the mite load (0.5/100) when I was about 2-3 weeks in to the 6-week treatment period for the Apivar. That'll be done the end of November and then the strips come out. The girls will be on their own until spring!

 Cam, Toby and Mom helped me sell the last of the honey at garden club last month. I can't believe how fast 300lbs of honey can disappear! There's a little bit of comb honey and that is it.