Queen castles and my one beekeeping goal

In late January, my apiary had dropped to one single hive. I started to think about what else I could do to set the bees up for success, not just seasonally, but in a resilient and long-term way.

Yesterday morning I inspected my hives before the summer heat took over. When I started to learn about beekeeping back in 2017, the general advice was to always have a goal when inspecting your hives. Sometimes you focus on making sure the queen is there (by finding her or seeing her eggs), other times it’s to check their food levels, the health of broo…