Preparing for extraction

I popped up to see some of my hives today to prepare for removing supers over the next couple of days. Hive Amidala has a full super, and another with an awful lot of uncapped honey in it. Oh well - the bees can have that one. I installed my porter bee escape equipped clearer board below the full super. These bee escapes failed dismally last year. Fingers crossed.

Hive Boudicca has no honey to take off. After the troubles with (I think) a swarm earlier in the year and broodlessness right into June I am hardly surprised by the lack of harvestable honey. The concern is whether the colony will be strong enough to make it through the winter, but it's stronger now than at this time last year, so I think I'll proceed with preparing it for winter rather than combining it with another colony.

I aim to take the supers off all my hives in the next couple of days, with varroa treatment (Apiguard) starting on Saturday, which has been mandated as "the" treatment day in north-west London: an attempt at coordination so as not to give the blighters anywhere to hide.