Congratulations Warren on your successful summer. It's hard to get a lot of forage outside of town in the native areas, unless there is a flowering farm, or big garden nearby.
I live on the west edge of Bend, with lots of native stuff and some domestic flowers. Looking at our local sagebrush, it is looking like it's pretty well finished. I agree it's nice to be able to get some varietal honey, especially sage brush, but my MO is generally to pull supers starting mid August with the understanding that they'll have both real nectar, as well as syrup to back fill until the end of September. What I worry about now, is that as the nights get colder, they both won't have native forage but also won't even be able to take in my syrup and I'll end up with a less well provisioned hives going into winter.
One person's opinion!
BTW, I've not before made the observation of two different types of sagebrush with different flowering times. Now I'll need to do some research and observations. THANK YOU.
Allen Engle
541-420-0423