My sister and I wrapped up 2021's spring honey harvest a couple of days ago. It was just an odd year weather wise and that was reflected in the honey crop. The honey is an amber color. Darker than in previous years, but still tastes great.
Two of the colonies managed to get laying queens in the supers. I got one squared away but didn't get much honey off of that colony due to that major mishap. The second colony I removed the queen excluder and wasn't up to reorganizing the boxes. Some of the smaller colonies only produced one super. Over all I got a lot less honey than in previous years and that's OK.
I offered my new honey house, for extraction, to a couple of gals that only have 2 colonies each. One of the gals said her bees hadn't capped any of the honey and she chose to feed it back to the bees in the fall. The 2nd gal got nothing. Not sure what happened there as she lives about 3/4 of a mile from me.
I am going to do mite tests today and treat. I know the mite numbers will be high, I am just curious how high. We have a break in the extreme heat this week and it will be an opportune time to treat. So, for me, time to start prepping the bees for winter.