Fall Tasks

I've completed extracting, have all of my hives down to three Western supers, they all look healthy and happy- which is plainly good luck- I don't recall having all hives on the same footing, or even better than good- some are as good as I've ever seen and some just remarkable- at least, in my experience. So- now the challenge is to see them through the winter, happy and healthy.

I have 15 hives - and took honey from 8 of them. I harvested about 600 pounds- and could have harvested more from the newer hives, as they are full and weighty- but I left them intact.

Today I completed the first round of medications for the Fall- both Fumigal and ApiLifeVar, and there are already hundreds of mites crawling on the boards.  In a month, or when it gets cool and rainy, I will place the vented tops on. I am trying to figure out how to combine the vented tops with a way to feed them in winter, without opening the top- as all the bees hang from the vented fabric. I feel like- sort of- for the first time, I sort of have a process, always  revising it, but it makes sense to me Its also way more work than I expect, it seems like it gets more and more involved.

The city is apparently moving toward limiting the number of hives I can have on my property- which is a shame, as they are innocuous here, and having more hives than a few allows me to be more efficient, and it is way more interesting- and, well, beautiful, in the evening, spiralling upward and downward in the light.