The seasons honey crop is all in drums in the shed and most of the beekeeping work has been done to prepare the hives for winter. Autumn has also been kind and hives have good honey stores for winter.
One of the jobs we do every Autumn is inspect our beehives for American Foul Brood disease. This is very time consuming but is necessary as AFB is easily spread between hives and once infected beehives must be destroyed. If infected colonies die before being found, other hives will rob the remaining honey and will become infected themselves. This situation can lead to many hives having to be destroyed. We have been fortunate enough to not have any of our beehives infected for several years. We put this down to good management but more important we have good clean beekeeping neighbours.
As soon as this situation changes we will be destroying hives again. Please keep up the good work neighbours.