The Latest Buzz #7

Late Summer — Counting What You Can't See

August and September don't announce themselves the way June does. There's no hum you can hear from across the yard. These are the months you stop watching for abundance and start watching for something harder to see. Mites don't show themselves the way a good brood pattern does. You can lift a frame and see bees that look perfectly fine, moving with all their usual purpose, and still be looking at a colony that's in real trouble. The only way to know is to check. Not guess. Check.

We had a state inspector join us for one of our inspections several weeks ago to help us out. I did the count. Below threshold. Good, but not a reason to stop paying attention. A number like that is a snapshot, not a promise. The plan was to wait 3-4 weeks, then treat anyway, on schedule, while there's still brood in the frames to protect. 

Inspections this time of year have their own particular rhythm. You're not looking for the exuberant, overflowing brood pattern of June. You're looking for the quieter kind of good: a queen still laying steadily, workers backfilling brood cells with nectar instead of raising more, the colony making its own quiet calculations about what it will need to survive months it hasn't seen yet. There's something almost moving about watching a hive prepare for a winter it has no way of picturing. It just knows, in whatever way bees know things, that the work now is different.

We also talked about the honey super: whether to pull it or leave it. We decided to leave it on. This colony has been through a lot this year: a swarm, a natural requeening, a mite treatment, a fair amount of resilience already asked of it. Extra stores feel like the right kind of insurance heading into a new forage area, even if it means less honey for us. The bees get first claim on what they made.

There's a version of this work that's all instinct and observation: the June version, wide open, trusting the bees to lead. September asks for something more exact. You still watch. You still listen at the lid. But you also count, and measure, and time your interventions instead of standing back from them. It's a different kind of attention, not a lesser one. Some months you get out of the bees' way. Other months, you're the only one who can see what's coming, and the job is to act on it before they have to find out the hard way.

The inspector's visit earlier this year confirmed what the wash suggested. A colony doing well, mite pressure under control. That's not luck. That's a season of checking, adjusting, and trying to stay one step ahead of a problem you can't see coming until you go looking for it.

So if you take one thing from this, let it be that a hive that looks fine isn't always the same as a hive that is fine. Checking is always important, no matter what your philosophy is.

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