I was planning to go and check a few yards today. I didn't really expect to see a lot of honey given the latest weather, but I was curious to see if a few of them had blown over from some recent winds. So what happens? Late yesterday afternoon winds (some around 75 mph) blew through parts of central Iowa and dropped at least 2.5" in Grinnell. I'm sitting out today in hopes of things drying up enough that I won't tear up the ground driving into the yards....also trying to avoid getting stuck of course. There is allegedly a good chance of more rain after 1 a.m. tonight. Smashing.

Several years ago I recall getting ready to go back to Iowa State with a very poor crop on the hives in August. Then the honey started coming in the next couple of weeks, and that saved us from a hopeless crop. We are getting to the end now--if things don't pick up soon we will be semi-skunked. Some yards still have basically nothing.

For today's illustration, here is Alex in the midst of a memorable spring-time attack.

Yesterday I drove around to see what transpired while I was away to England and Sweden, but the news wasn't the best. We're closing in on August and there hasn't been a really good flow in all of the yards. About 1/3 of them have had a significant amount of honey fill the boxes, but there is a long stretch to go before a respectable crop hits the barrels. Five inches of rain in the last week hasn't helped our prospects. On the fortunate side, I did pull half a dozen boxes of cut comb yesterday. At least we have a start on the Iowa State Fair demands.

Also, the building has made great strides toward completion in the past couple of weeks. We still need some finishing touches on the basic structure, but the main thing is the electrical work. Hopefully the electrical guys can make it in the next couple of weeks as well.

Here is our newly lengthened building--quite the increase....

This is the future extracting room--it seems we might not get to use it until next year though.

And a little extra storage space should help ease congestion in the warehouse.

The odds for a good crop are increasing. Some of the strong colonies have already begun to gather a couple of boxes of honey. Most of the splits still have very little or nothing stored away for us. The bloom is pretty good, and we definitely have enough soil moisture to sustain the flowers if we could manage a couple of weeks of hot weather to work some magic.

In other news, our building has finally started to take shape after a few months of waiting for the rains to ease.