Getting ready for winter

We begin to start the process of doing our final mite treatments before winter and then begin wrapping our hives, this takes about two weeks in total. We lift each hive to check the weight of it. We want to have each hive going into winter with between 70-100 lbs of honey. Back in September, when I was checking the status of each hive, I would have joined hives that were weak with ones that were strong, using the newspaper method to join them. That way, the combined hives would have plenty of time to store honey for the long winter months ahead. The pictures below show one of our yards in early September, then all wrapped up for winter in November.

Big Job all done, four more yards to go.