What's next?

I just spent a little time reading the bee forums to figure out how I need to prepare my hives for winter. While browsing the site, I found a post from this man, who had 11 supers on his hive in Palo Alto, which yielded about 300 lbs. of honey. dude...


The posts suggest that we live in the best area in the US for beekeeping, in that we never have real winters. The temperature remains warm enough for the bees to continue foraging throughout the winter months, and eucalyptus trees bloom starting in late October through February. They will usually fill up a super by February if they aren't infested with mites.

This means that I'll probably just keep hives with the 3 full mediums going into next month. I'll add a fourth super to both hives with empty frames and they can fill them as they see fit. I'm going to begin to measure mite loads with a sticky board and will try some of the non-chemical methods to reduce mite numbers if they seem high.