End Game

Beekeeping has as many objectives as there are beekeepers, but most of us are gratified if we can share a little honey. This is about as close to the ideal as I could hope for: fresh, clean, even comb, entirely filling the frame; every cell filled with honey; virtually all of it sealed in with a capping of delicate, pale wax - an absolutely cast iron guarantee that the honey is 'ripe' - its moisture content reduced to around 17%. The face of the comb is pretty flat too, which makes it easy to remove the cappings prior to extraction 

There are four boxes on the top of the hive, each containing 11 frames looking somewhat like this. Not all are quite as fully capped; not all are quite as even. Some have pollen interspersed with the honey; that can get a bit mixed up with the honey during extraction and make it a little cloudy - but hey, it's protein, we are not trying to win show prizes

Now there is a balancing act of intersecting husbandry and personal constraints to perform. We must take off the honey before we treat the bees for Varroa, to avoid contamination. We must treat early enough to ensure that the 'winter bees' - the physiologically specialised workers that must live long enough to carry the colony through the long winter months - are raised with as few Varroa around as possible. Varroa infect the bees with viruses that shorten their lives, which can make the colony fatally weak over winter

But we mustn't move too soon. The queen is still laying strongly; the colony is still very large. I'm apprehensive about reducing the size of the hive so dramatically while we are still enjoying hot late-summer days. The Varroa treatment can be overpowering for the colony if temperatures are too high. It's a bit like timing your run in the 1500m final

In between all this we have lives to live, and some exciting family time factored in over the next few weeks, along with all the usual tasks of keeping a house and garden and orchard ticking over. It will all fall into place; everything will be sweet