It is time to order some supplies for the year. In preparation, I did a full inventory of my bee stuff last month. I have equipment spread out between the basement, the garage, the shed, and the bee yard, and as my hives have expanded I haven’t kept track of exactly what I have as well as I perhaps should.

So I counted everything everywhere, from boxes to feeders to covers to frames. It turns out I have a lot of stuff. I have never done such an inventory in the past, so it was a bit eye opening.

I will spare you the full details. Including my existing hives (with bees) I have 25 medium 8-frame boxes and 14 medium 5-frame nuc boxes, plus 239 medium frames (wow!). All that plus 31 deep frames and 82 top bar hive bars. It’s a lot of stuff.

Now that I have the inventory, I can look at what I want to do this year and think about what additional equipment I can use. Definitely seems like a useful habit, I guess this is why stores often do an annual inventory.

I’m planning to place equipment orders next week. I am selling some nucs this year and would like to give out a plywood nuc from Dadant with each order, and it turns out only Betterbee sells assembled frames without foundation that I like to buy. So I guess I’m placing orders from two different companies. I need to get some new gloves, some Formic Pro, a couple top feeders, and maybe even some medium boxes.

May you prosper and find honey.