Your Central Oregon Apiary in August 2026 

Summer is 1/2 over. The trees and flowers in the city have changed from the bright spring flowers and bulbs, to the more stately deep colors. The wonderful weeds are also to be seen. In the rural areas, I’m seeing the late summer sagebrush and rabbitbrush blooming. And the nights and mornings are getting cooler.

For our bees, the summer is more like 2/3 over. Hard though it might be, we need to start thinking about early preparations for winter. Our colonies have changed from spring buildup mode to summer maintenance and production, and this month will start their winter preparations as well. This includes, food stores, but almost more importantly production of Winter bees….the ones that’ll get your colony started again early next spring.

If you’ve been nursing a weak colony along, hoping for a miracle, this month would be a good time to either bulk it up with brood, bees and food from your spare parts nuc, or combine with another colony. They likely won’t be able to fix it on their own.

If your colony is still quite light with food, try to figure out what the problem is (lack of bees, sick bees, high mite level, too little forage etc.) and fix it if possible. Then start feeding. It takes your bees time to process the syrup and you don’t need to worry as much about them becoming honeybound.

Keep your mites low.

Many local beekeepers like to pull supers the second week of August. This does two things. First it allows your bees to start backfilling brood comb with honey as your queen slows down her laying. Second, it opens up the treatment possibilities for mites.

Speaking of mites, with the decreasing in brood production, many of the mites which were in the capped brood (majority) will now be in their phonetic stage, on your adult bees, so your mite counts will go up, sometimes dramatically. If you don’t keep these under control, production of healthy and vigorous winter bees will be compromised. Depending on weather, this month can be a little tricky for treatments. High temps can still be in the 90s, low temps can be dropping into the high 30s. Keep in mind that some treatments are better as a quick, more knock down (for higher mite loads) (formic acids for example) and others as a slower, maintenance (for lower mite loads) (oxalic , varoxan, apigard, apivar for example). On all of these, please read the HBHC tools for Varroa management, and the label for the complete lowdown.

If you have extra queens, or can buy one, this month can be a good time to requeen an older or weaker, or failing queen, and provide a good start next spring.

Congratulations on your summer. Wishing you a great harvest and a successful winter prep.

Allen Engle