Fair

The Spokane Fair has come and gone!  The boys and I spent an afternoon working at the bee club booth.

 

Toby gets his product ready to sell.

 

Taking a break. A four hour shift is a lot for an 8-yr old.

 

Working up an appetite selling honey? Ok.

 

The annuals are looking good at Manito Park but there's not much for the bees to eat. The hives are losing weight every day. I'm feeding them sugar syrup 2-3 times a week and trying to build them up. 

 

Yuck! What's this? The mite count has spiked up just like last year. Ugh. From 6:300 to 32!!  Not good. So now I have Apivar strips in the hives for the next six weeks. 

Honey Harvest

It's that time of year again for buckets and bottling.

 

It was a better harvest than last year but not by a lot: about 130 lbs. That's enough for me to replenish my stash and share/sell a little but not as much as I was hoping for. What happened? Good question. I think the swarming and re-queening were the main issues. The hives just didn't have the big numbers of foragers at the right time. The queens did eventually kick in and raised a lot of brood but by then the big flow was already over. Looking at the scale data, it's pretty clear that we had one big flow when the locust trees were blooming late spring/early summer. This was followed by a dearth and then another smaller flow in late July/early August. I can't wait to see what happens next year and see how it compares. I wonder if this year was typical or not. If it was, I'm hoping the scale data can help predict what to expect and help me be better prepared next year.

My mite count was good after I got the supers off but I'll check it again in a couple of weeks. Seems like the numbers spike after they get rid of the drones. 

Next, time to go to the fair!