Goldenrod honey flow

The goldenrod started blooming this week and the bees have been busy gathering the last major honey flow of the year.

There is lots of goldenrod blooming right around my hives as well as all over the countryside.  We have finally had some rain to bring it on so hope there's some nectar there to add to their stores.

I took a look in the top honey super on my strong South hive.  This is the sixth medium box on this rather tall hive.  Here is the second frame from the outside which shows lots of liquid nectar being stored.

This is one of the middle frames of that box showing some honey that has now been capped.

Here is a frame full of capped honey from my weaker North hive.   I had to get into the fourth box to find this, as the fifth box is still early empty of any wax.

Here's a middle frame out of the top brood box (3d box from the bottom of the hive).  I think this was a frame where I thought I saw eggs in my inspection last week.  The mass of capped brood tells me I was right.  There is honey on both ends.

Another middle frame with beautiful pattern of capped brood and a little honey capped on both ends.  The new queen in this hive seems to be going strong.

Something is robbing my grapes as can be seen here.  These are Concords and they are ripe now.  I'm not doing anything with them this year, but next year I will need to give them some protection from varmints.  From the pattern of the taking, and from some vines being pulled down from the wire, I think this was possums or raccoons.

The Jonathan apples are ripe, and I picked several to make a pie.  I don't know why the animals aren't grabbing these too, but I'm glad they aren't.

The ornamental grass next to the garden gate is tasseling.

Late summer/early fall

The apples are getting close to ripe.  The branches on this Red Delicious apple tree are really weighed down with apples.

These Starkling Delicious pears are ripe and need to be picked before they drop and the animals get them.

The Concord Grapes have been purple for a while and I need to figure out how to tell when they are ripe, though I'm not sure that I'm ready to do anything with them this year.

The Norton grapes have turned a deep purple color and are probably also getting close to ripe.

The garden has kind of gotten away from me.  This weed patch is where my potatoes are that I need to start digging.  The weeds seem to have exploded even though we haven't had much rain in the latter part of the Summer.  We did have storms the night before these pictures that dumped 2 1/2 inches of rain on us so that should perk things up.  My tomatoes are ripening at a rapid pace that we just haven't been able to keep up with.  I should can some but we haven't done so yet.

My beautiful tall sweet corn was flattened by the storms that rolled through last night.  I didn't see signs of wind damage elsewhere, so not sure if it was wind or just the heavy rain.  I should get in her and grab whatever ears that I can.
No bee pictures this week.  The batteries in my camera were dead when I was ready to check my bees today.  New real new things to photograph anyway.  The weaker North hive continues to put out a lot of brood and this time, with the help of a magnifier, I think that I finally saw eggs.  The strong South have is starting to cap the honey in the third top super.  The fall honey flow should be starting up now as the goldenrod is just starting to bloom now.  I tried to buy an extractor this week to harvest some of that honey, but the supplier was out of the model that I wanted and said it would be at least two weeks before they had some in to sell.