Your beehive should be in honey production phase. For a new hive you may be only adding your 2nd box at this point, and if your hive is doing well and further along you may have 3 or more already on. In either case, Mid-Summer is about getting the bees the space they need. Honey extraction will be the next phase. If you live in a winter climate you will want to have 2 brood boxes (Deep Combos) and then begin adding honeys supers and using them until you are ready to extract.
Take notice of the varying heights and boxes on each of these hives. Even hives in the same area will will vary. Each of these pallets have 4 hives per pallet, on the first pallet the back 2 are only at 2 box heights. Some hives are destine to struggle do to a weak colony/queen. We will address addressed a struggling hive in last weeks blog.
If you are unsure on how to add your honey boxes and make that inspection, here is a video that will help: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCPBpQsufUA.
Some of the questions we get asked frequently about adding boxes are:
Question: Do I need a bottom board in between each box?
Answer: No, the boxes will be stacked on top of each other without any barrier, you can use a queen excluder (we will address that in a separate blog post).
Question: Is there a limit to how high I can have my boxes?
Answer: No, once you are past your brood boxes and now into honey supers (medium boxes), you can continue adding honey supers until you are ready to extract. If cost is a concern you can extract more frequently and cycle the boxes until you are ready to winterize your hive or the honey flow has ended.