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Winding down the season

It’s starting to cool off – and the beekeeping season is starting to wind down.

That does NOT imply, though, that we are done with the hive or honeybee work for the year.  What’s there still to do, you may be asking yourself?

There’s lots! How about:

  • Feeding for strong brood through the winter
  • Manage the hives and combine any that are too weak to survive the winter with stronger hives
  • Melting down and cleaning old wax into ingots
  • Building and repairing swarm traps
  • Making bottom-boards and hive covers
  • Making new hive boxes for next years’ growth
  • Making more honey supers for next years’ crop
  • Making nuc boxes for spring 2013 splits/growth
  • Assembling frames… assembling frames… assembling frames…
  • Making wax foundation for the frames/hives
  • Building pollen-catchers to harvest incoming local pollen
  • Making hive-stands

The unfortunate truth, is that this growth and activity is paid for by the profits from the spring and summer honey flows.  Please remember that when you buy local honey from your local beekeepers.  Sometimes honey may seem expensive – but it’s really not when you consider all the work, equipment, labor, and education that is indeed part of the process to bring it to your table.

So – in addition to this work – I’m also still very active with performing honeybee removals from peoples’ homes.  The spring and summer is really the best time to do this – however sometimes people need the bees to be re-homed NOW.   I’ll perform that service for you – just call me for pricing and scheduling.

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