I think that’s it!

On Saturday I extracted what is likely to be the last honey from my hives.  The final super came from my city hive and it gave me another 8kg (18 lbs)!  So the overall total for the honey I harvested this year stacks up as…

Blue Queen Hive - 61 kg (135 lbs)
White Queen Hive - 31 kg (68 lbs)
Botanical Gardens - 14 kg (30 lbs)
City Bees - 30 kg (66 lbs)

Overall that’s 136 kg (300 lbs) of honey.  Brilliant!

The hive at the botanical gardens seems to have an active laying queen.  We had some doubt as I did not see any eggs or larvae at the weekend.  However I checked today and I spied some larvae in a nice dense pattern.  Perhaps the queen was not actively laying during the period that I was treating for mites.  There has been observation that this might be the case when using Mite Away Quick Strips.  I’m not 100% happy with the behavior of this hive – it gets quite defensive. But that may be down to the fact the hive was being sprayed by an irrigation hose today!  Irrespective, I think I will leave her alone for now. Perhaps if she gets through the winter I will think about requeening in the spring.