Where do you live and what are your usual weather and environmental hazards?

[addy1]

You didn't leave them with one super with honey in it at harvest? We allways left our bees with a super of honey, or at least several frames full, to hold them over for a while. (depending on weather, and flowering)

Yes they always had a box full of honey. Usually 8 frames of honey, two of brood, or empty cells. Most of the time a deep.
The brood boxes below would have 4 or more honey frames.

It would be stripped of honey in July/august. If we didn't supplement feed.
It was not the heavy feeding we did in the fall, just a constant flow of 1 -1 sugar water. Usually a quart at a time.

In the fall gallons of 2-1. We never did a fall harvest, just spring.

Winter, sugar cakes, from Nov until the end of March. Our winters are warming now, the bees fly looking for food there is none. They come back hungry.

We have a short, 8 to 9 week intense nectar flow, from mid April to late June. After that a bee desert.

 

[Michael from Daytona]

Hoping everyone is staying safe, wherever you live!

I have been following @rubyduby ’s thread about the hurricane, and it occurred to me that (other than going through each member profile) I don’t have a complete grasp on who lives where. Each part of the USA (and every part of the world) has its own unique weather, and environmental hazards…..and right now (2023), is proving that it doesn’t matter WHERE you live….it can happen to you.

 

[Michael from Daytona]

Living in Central Florida (Daytona), a block from the ocean. I hate to say it, but weather in DB this year has been wonderful save two hurricane near-misses (Ian and Idalia), knock on wood. This spring provided consistent, over-average rainfall, so gardening has been a joy. I collect rainwater off my metal roof which I store via BlueBarrel 50 gal containers (400 gal total) for pond replenishment due to evaporation. Average daily high temps from mid-April through October hover in the high 80s with lows in the high 70s. We did have a rare spell of three-digit weather for a few days, but beachside breezes help with that. Summer humidity makes it feel ten degrees warmer than the thermometer reads, but with high humidity, evaporation from my two 600 gal ponds connected by waterfall is held to a minimum (the drier the air, the higher the rate of evaporation). On average I lose about 3/4" per day, which I replace with the stored rainwater. When that runs out, I stoop to use tap water - which of course should be ameliorated with chlorine neutralizer, although a ratio of 35 gallons' tap water to 1200 gallons' pond water every few days does not represent a significant toxic load on the fish. With water temps in the mid-80s, dissolved chlorine tends to evaporate quickly and so, I do not always add chlorine neutralizer unless I have added daily tapwater in amounts over 50 gal. In any event, my nine koi and nine comets have had no problems with the weather and in fact have been reproducing, with three new black koi a year ago (they're now 5" long) and two blonde ones this spring (they are now more than 2" long).

Looks like the hurricane season will be an active one again this year, hoping the Atlantic ones will stay offshore.