It's been a while since the last post and a lot has happened, although it was mostly just routine beekeeping. We harvested our fall honey at the end of August and, like our summer harvest, ended up with a lot! I think we estimated we got around 150 lbs this year, which is around 12 gallons. Several of the super frames had capped and uncapped larvae, so I didn't extract those, but I didn't put them back in the hive either. I may put new foundation in those frames this winter, otherwise we'll put them in the second supers next year and hopefully the bees will clean things up and the queen won't go up there to lay again.
In early September we did our three applications of Api-Life Var to the hives, seven days apart. I've never done any mite counts, so they may not even be necessary, but I'm going to err on the side of caution since they seem to be a prevalent pest in beehives. During part of the medication I added a third empty hive body above the inner cover and began making 1:1 syrup to feed to the bees in the half-gallon quail waterers that I use. I mixed in some Fumagilin medication to help with any nosema the bees may have. I've been feeding about a gallon per week per hive for a little over a month and the average daily temperature is getting much cooler now, so I think I'm about done. I need to make some more candy and then i'll be time to wrap them with homasote for the winter.
