My year of beekeeping.
Wait for a sunny day at mid March
Go for a walk through knee deep snow in the beeyards. Remove snow from entrances and look for who is alive and who is dead by what comes out of the entrance to greet the sun.
End of march. Plow snow for vehicle access. Do another walk around to see whos left and getting ready to play. Heft some to get a gauge on food or starvation. Play the undertaker role. Cleanup and clear out the dead..
Middle of April. Open the first hive and begin cleaning. Balance and boost strengths. Feed if needed.
End of April. Look for queen failures. Balancing strengths. Check mite loads. Setup drone mothers. Treat and feed.
Middle of May. Makeup and sell nucs. Prime the production hives.
June, raise queens and repopulate the winter nucs. Draw out all new foundation combs on dandelions shrubs and weeds.
July. Crops bloom. Intense Production. Hives are 5 to 7 deeps tall full of honey. Harvest and extract from each hive, bees refill the boxes 3 times, 3 harvests.
Mid August. All supers removed and hives reduced to singles or doubles. Mite treatments applied.
September. Feed to hives and winter nucs to target winter weights
October cdn thanks giving. Round of checks to see who is still alive and who mite crashed. Cleanup and clear out the dead. Weigh hives. Top up feed. Winter wrap.
Halloween. Batten down the hatches and walk away.
Drink coco, rum, read, write, snowmobile, ice fish, ski all winter.
Got back trudging through the snow at the next March and do it all again.