I gave away a six bears to friends and family. I sold 20 bears to neighbors by way of the roadside sign. We sold the last one yesterday. It took about two months, but sales did not really take off until the end of August.

By my best calculation each 12 ounce bear cost me $60 and we sold them for $6 each. This is the economics of beekeeping. Since most of the sales happened when I was not home, I did not even get to see the money.

I am feeding the bees about 5 pounds of sugar a week now. I hope that some of this winds up as honey in the supers.

In a few weeks I will take off the supers for the winter and leave just the two deeps. I will continue to feed them sugar water as long as it is warm enough for the bees to move about. I figure if it hits 50 degrees during the day, I can add more sugar.

I am going to get another order of pollen substitute for the winter. I put one in each hive at the end of August, but the bees have not finished them. They did not touch them for a while, but now they are starting to clean up the wax paper and the edges of the pollen patties are all gone. I figure that by the time a new order arrives that they will be ready for another patty each.

I received my pizza pie pans (my secret weapon in the battle against honey) and I will finish up my Honey Extractor Release 2.0 when I have the energy.