It has been a spectacular summer for both my garden and the bees.

After a cold spring that was achingly long to come, plentiful rain followed by warm temperatures helped my garden grow by leaps and bounds. The day lilies put up flower spikes that almost reached my armpits and I cannot recall purple coneflowers and rudbeckia ever growing so tall.

I am assuming these larger-than-normal flowers also are producing a healthy crop of pollen and nectar. That’s good for the bees.

The warm temperatures in July helped the bees fly faster and the nectar flow more freely, so I am quite hopeful for a bountiful honey harvest.

But now that it’s August, fewer plants will be flowering and my bees will notice the change before I do. Soon I will put on my robbing screens, which keeps bees from raiding weaker colonies. (More about that in another post!)

A couple years ago I lost two hives in August to robbing. I thought they were doing well, but alas, I lost the bees AND the honey they had put away for winter. It was such a disappointment (and fatal for the bees).

I am just thankful for the season we have had – and hope I can do the right things in the next several weeks to bring in a bumper crop of honey and to have healthy bees going into fall and winter.