Well, it looks like all of the yards will have produced something this year. Not much, but at least something. Hundreds of our honey supers are on moth crystals instead of hives, but we did not get totally shut out of a crop. We can probably classify it as "fair" rather than very poor. So, now is the time the boxes start coming off and the mites need to get killed. The varroa numbers are climbing, and below I have a couple of images that Alex took the other day when we stripped a few yards.

This is what we don't want to see in the drone brood between boxes--little red devils.

And here are the little uglies, up close and personal.

It's finally heating up and drying out. The planting ran so late that there will be soybeans blooming through most of August. I also saw some bees on the first yellow flowers to open a few days ago. There is some chance we could get another 20-50 pounds this month, it's just so rare that I don't want to hold my breath. The other factor in play is that our varroa mite situation seems to be escalating. We'll start sampling soon, but I've already seen them in the hives more than I would like.

I've gotten about three barrels of honey extracted, plus what is in the processing system. There was a time that seemed like a lot of honey for us, but now I remember 2005 and recall that we had 100 barrels processed before the middle of August. Not quite the same circumstances this year.

Today I'm going around to check a few yards. A couple of days ago it appeared the honey was starting to come a little quicker, so I'll get a sample of what's going on in other places. I also need to get some of our surplus honey boxes out on the hives to keep the wax moths from finding them. We don't use queen excluders on our doubles, so the risk of moths finding pollen and dark combs in the honey boxes is pretty high.