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  "description": "Midseason activities include managing late-swarming, rearing queens for overwintering in nucs, and making the best of the summer nectar flows … and, if that wasn't enough, there's the winter ahead to start preparing for. And now isn't too soon.",
  "path": "/half-time/",
  "publishedAt": "2026-07-03T16:00:59.000Z",
  "site": "https://theapiarist.org",
  "tags": [
    "June gap",
    "regular sponsor-only content",
    "Subscribe now"
  ],
  "textContent": "Heatwave 2.0 has been and gone, Prime Minister 9.0 appears to have been (amicably?) decided {{1}}, and the newspapers have instead reverted to saturation coverage of the 'soccer' World Cup.\n\nIn the hope of also attracting some errant Google search activity I've used a sporting term for the title of the post, though it was primarily chosen to reflect the stage we've reached in the beekeeping season.\n\nThe June gap has closed again. It wasn't very protracted, and most colonies continued to find bits and pieces to forage on. The only ones that needed feeding were mini-nucs and my queenright cell raiser. The former because the foraging workforce is simply too small, and the latter because _any_ break in nutrition — at least during the ~5 days between grafting and the new cells being sealed — is likely to result in sub-par queens.\n\nFlowering blackberry, Ardnamurchan, early July 2023\n\nThe blackberry is now flowering well, and it's probably the start of the main summer nectar flows. I say 'probably' because this is only my second full season in the Scottish Borders {{2}}, last year was far from typical, and so I don't have a lot to go on.\n\nAt least, I hope it was atypical, because the 2025 summer yielded little honey 😞.\n\nThis time last year the supers on my colonies next to 25 acres of brightly flowering _Phacelia_ remained echoingly empty.\n\nThe crop flowered from late-June for about a month.\n\nIt yielded nothing.\n\nIn contrast, a few weeks later after a bit of summer rain, some late-sown _Phacelia_ near another apiary produced a reasonable crop in late-August, but those supers didn't come off until early September.\n\nThis causes two issues; it overlaps (completely) with the heather, and it's getting late in the year to apply miticides to protect the developing winter bees.\n\nIf you want to avoid the AI 'slop' that increasingly contaminates beekeeping websites then please consider supporting __The Apiarist__. Sponsors ensure the continued existence of the site, and receive regular sponsor-only content. Claude is super-polite, but struggles to mark queens or find day-old larvae, so why trust its (his?) judgement when seeking information or entertainment on the science, art, and practice of sustainable beekeeping?\n\nYes please … sign me up as a sponsor\n\n### This post is for subscribers only\n\nBecome a member to get access to all content\n\nSubscribe now",
  "title": "Half-time",
  "updatedAt": "2026-07-03T18:00:59.728Z"
}