I made a move this year into a zone where goldenrod is plentiful. This looks to be a good year for it, the late blooming is getting started this week. What is the best strategy to use to harvest some? All my hives are in their winter configuration now. Should I allow them to backfill their nest, then add a super for myself, or add an excluder and super right away? I'm only looking to harvest from my large hives. What strategy do those with experience use?
Thanks
PAHunter62
You may need to experiment to see what your area has for a GR flow. there are a couple ways to play it. 1) take your honey pre GR flow and use the GR for the winter feed for the bees. 2) super up for the GR flow and leave either previous honey or feed. I do a little of both,

My NUCs and new hives get topped off with the GR flow hopefully minimizing my need to feed , which I loath to do. The Big hives 8 boxes or more, I let them finish filling the remaining super space with the GR honey and it is blended in when extracting. 2 observations, for my Michigan GR flow, bees seem to not want to draw comb for it, they will back fill the brood nest, or finish supers with it. And IF I wanted just GR honey, I would likely take 1/2 to 2/3 of the supers off pre GR flow , Extract, and add them back. the comb would be cleaned and filled with GR flow timed honey. So IMO placing supers of comb for the GR flow would be necessary to fully take advantage of it. I stumbled, into a good bit of GR honey one year when I ran out of supers. I was either needing to make 12 supers up really quick or risk late swarming. My way out was to take 2 supers off the 6 biggest hives in July, extract, and re use. With some delays and the extract time, the supers ended up getting a large portion filled with the GR flow. to be fair GR is not the only flow in the fall so it is really a mix with a large GR component. Good luck with your Golden Rod plans.
GG