Last night we had one of the prettiest sunsets of the year. The Iowa skies have proven exceptionally colorful, but yesterday evening the air seemed to glow all around. The image above shows the last moments before nightfall. The pressure is mounting as the temperature prepares to plunge, two snowfalls are forecast for this week, and we are still finishing the last round of feeding as we begin to roundup the bees for California. The next several days will be a hard push. Yesterday's work carried into the darkness in order to prepare for a Sunday on bee rounds. I've tried not to put in too many Sunday hours doing serious labor this year, but today's 57 degree high might not recur for a long time. It's a lot easier to help the bees when it's warm.

Getting the bees up to weight has seemed to drag on a little bit. We have some pretty awesome looking hives with bees in both boxes for the most part. The brood builder patties helped make some more bees, but that brood rearing has also caused more calories to burn as the workers incubate those babies. Overall we appear to be in quite good shape on the weight issue. There are still 150 or so that I want to double check today. I know some of them will be needy. Beekeeping is such a race during every single stage of the year!

The Lynnville side of the operation started to roundup bees for California this past week. We will do the same in Mount Vernon this week. Hopefully the snow doesn't get too deep too quick. There are three or four remote locations I will have to pull to make sure they don't get marooned at the wrong time as we try to get the truckloads organized. Rush, rush, and rush a little more.