I have been a little worried about the bees. July was very hot for most of the month. I lifted the telescoping cover and put a small stick to hold it open so that the bees would have plenty of air circulation. The bees liked to beard the front of the hives and when I lifted the lids they hung out on the top of the inner cover and enjoyed the shade and the breezes. The temperatures have dropped down to the 80s during the day and into the 60s at night so the covers are back in place.
Watching the hives I did not see any bees returning with pollen for most of July and I was worried that they were hungry. I have heard about hives starving in July and August. There are good bee flowers in the fall around here. I hear golden rod is good, and I’ve seen bees going nuts on sumac trees. The sumac should start soon.
The hay fever plants like golden rod, rag weed and queen anne’s lace bloom starting in late august and last until the killing frosts in October. I think these are good for bees.
I cleaned out my top feeders and stacked them near the house preparing to start feeding.
I woke up Sunday morning, August 1st, with horrible hay fever allergies and have been taking pills since. My head is all stuffed up and it means that the fall allergy flowers bloomed over the weekend.
The bees are now returning to the hive with baskets of yellow and orange pollen. I am guessing that I won’t have to feed them. I was prepared to start the feeding, but I think now that the fall flowers are starting up and the bees will be able to replenish their food supplies. They may have used up some stored honey in July for a few weeks, but they are back at work gathering food.
I have four hives. One I robbed in the spring and they are slowly refilling the supers. One is a Russian hive and grows slowly. The supers in the Russian have some honey and are well drawn, but there is not enough to harvest. The two new hives that I started from packages in April have lots of honey in the supers and I will harvest about 30 frames as soon as I solve the problem of the honey extractor.
As far as the honey extractor goes, I am still going to make one of my own. The disaster of the last one is still with me. I don’t want to use the crush and strain method again. It took 4 or 5 hours to get a few gallons of honey.
I have sold about $50 worth of honey from the roadside sign. I hope to sell lots more and everyone I know will be getting honey for Christmas.
