Over Achieving Bees

I was down pulling some honey from the hives I keep at the Peach Orchard this morning. The bees are finally managing to get some honey cured now that it has stopped raining everyday although the humidity has been high which is slowing the process down a bit.

The Small-Hold Women have been after me to get em some Peaches since our two tree have already ripened and been consumed. The old guy that owns the orchard was like....

"Pick ALL YOU WANT!!!!! PLEASE".

You can see why in the pictures. The girls really went at it this Spring and pollinated every Peach bloom they could find there. It's to the point his limbs are snapping off and he has more Peaches than he knows what to do with.

I must have picked 50 pounds or more off one tree and I didn't even make a dent in the Peaches. The damned Japanese beetles were trying to eat every ripe peach they could get to as well and even they weren't making a dent in the them.

The entire orchard was just falling over from all the ripe Peaches. I would say the girls were a bit overzealous and over achievers with the pollination services this Spring.

I managed to pull about a surplus super and a half of capped honey. There is still a lot of uncapped stuff on the hives and a couple of the hives still had some capped brood up in the surplus supers. Usually the queens are laying well down in the brood boxes by this time of year. I will need to check for tunneling on a couple of the hives before the Goldenrod flow swings into gear.

It's just been a weird year for honey. Lot's of flowers and forage due to the rain but also lot's of humidity and days trapped inside the hive when they couldn't forage but still needed to eat. There is also not a lot of pollen going into the hives yet and that is odd. The queens should be laying like mad building up for the Fall flow and making sure they have a good Winter ball.

Maybe it is a bit too early to be worrying yet though.

Keep Prepping Everyone!!!!!!