Fall | Beekeeping in Richmond, Virginia

Lessons for 2012

I was recently asked by an experienced beekeeper ‘what did you learn in 2012’? I have had a lot of time to reflect on that question, as I prepare my hives for the Winter (see a brief note on that task below.)

This year proved to be a banner year in the apiaries. I created several Nuc’s in February that all became nice, strong colonies. I sold all of them but one, as I wanted to see how long the queen remained a viable later on. There are two risks with creating a Nuc so early. One is the weather – this past Winter posed no problem here. The second is the possible lack of drones. This second issue may mean that the queens from those early Nucs were not mated enough to make it as long as they otherwise might. In my mind, there is no real way to determine this except to keep the hive for three years and make sure the queen doesn’t falter early. So, no likely update on this experiment until 2015 (or earlier if it turned out to be a failure!)

I also learned that, under good conditions, you can take more than 3 deep frames from a Deep/Med setup for a Nuc without slowing them down or even stopping them from swarming. In all likelihood, I will simply create more than one Nuc from my strong hives in 2013 (I have increased my Nuc boxes by a lot, to prepare for this possibility.) The key here is to not take so much that they flounder for a month trying to rebuild. So, instead of taking more than 3 at Nuc creation time, I’ll probably take 3 one weekend and another 3 some three or four weekends later.

The painful lesson centered on supers. I will never leave 4 or more supers of honey on a hive. My banner hive (out of 30 or so honey producing hives this past Spring) drew out and capped a little under 4 supers (2 shallows and 2 mediums) of honey. I was struggling during these months, trying to keep up with my bees, and never got around to pulling the supers until sometime in June. I cannot be sure, but it appears that the hive swarmed and the queen did not make it back (another lesson here is to check for a single frame of brood at every inspection). The hive was robbed out with a bit of wax moth and SHB in it, once I got to it in June. I deal with losses pretty well, but this one hurt. I had big plans for that queen/bloodline. I was also excited about 4 supers of honey! At any rate, I now know that I can never be sure that I will get to every hive in a timely manner. So, I will be unlikely to leave more than 3 supers on a hive at any given time.

For Winter Nuc’s, I found that early August is about the latest I should start them. I tested a few in mid to late-August and they were unable to fill out the second Nuc body with honey. I’ll let them make a go of it this Winter (as a test), but I’d prefer that they had more honey (I may give one of them a medium nuc of honey from one of my bank hives.)

Winter Prep

Winter prep for me basically involves a few simple tasks, none of which require a full hive breakdown. The first thing I check is honey. I pull a few frames from the top hive body (for me, this is almost always a Medium) and make sure they have a fully capped super. The second thing that I do is spot check the bottom super by pulling one of the center frames and making sure that I have capped brood. All the while, I am looking at as many bees as I can and making sure that nothing is amiss (currently, my main way to judge this is by deformed wing virus.) I then level the hive off (in case is shifted during the year) and make sure it is slightly leaning forward. Finally, I put on an entrance reducer (and a cover, if the hive has a screened bottom board – I stopped using these but still have a dozen or so out in the yards.)

Wintering Nuc Update

We had a few hours of sun today, before the drenching arms of Issac came through and it allowed me to check my Overwintered Nucs. I started 11 for this Winter, hoping to have 8 take (strong, laying queens) and 6 make it to next Spring. One had actually perished a couple of weeks ago (I have already combined it with another Nuc.) This one started getting robbed about 4 days after I created it. Since it was nestled among 4 others, I was worried the robbing would spread, but it didn’t. I even moved the thing and gave it another frame of brood/eggs from a donor hive, only to have robbing start up again. Experiences like these indicate to me that there is some kind of a ‘scent’ issue (the Nuc simply advertises that it is weak and available for robbing.) There are many possibilities – too many for me to touch on in this post. Regardless, I was down to 10 before I even got started! What irks me the MOST is that I tried to save it, even though I know better. It seems that some habits die hard and I am simply going to throw good bees after bad, every year, regardless of my experiences.

On a more positive note, all of the remaining 10 had a laying queen as of today. Of those 10, only 2 were slight laggards. I do not judge a queen by this measure, as a lot of a queen’s laying hinges on the resources available and coming in. These two Nucs may not have had the resources available to them to really lay. But, I start feeding my Wintering Nucs on Sep 1, so they all received two mason jars in an empty hive body on top. Depending on how the Nucs were set-up, I have differing strategies now.

Four of my wintering Nucs came from one hive that I broke down. This was my absolute nastiest, meanest hive. They could handle anything mother nature threw at them, didn’t like to swarm and could put honey away like nobody’s business. But, the second I opened this hive up (with or without smoke, morning, noon or afternoon), they would literally come pouring out of the thing! I never kept track, but I am willing to bet that if you counted up ALL of the stings I have taken from my hives, this hive accounted for over 50% of the total… They were so mean that I never could find the queen when I wanted to re-queen them (I typically do this in May, for an established hive). It’s hard to find a wiley little wench when all of her sisters are jabbing you from all corners! So, I chose this hive to create my wintering nucs from. As a side tale, I never found the queen IN the hive when I broke them apart. I actually found her afterwards, on the ground in a ball of bees, outside of the entrance to the hive. I wonder if she always jumped off the frame when I came looking. At any rate, she lost a head by my hive tool on that day.

But, back to the point, since these wintering Nucs came from an established hive, they actually started with a two Nuc body setup and with a decent amount of stored honey already there. My main goal with these hives is to see them cap off the upper Nuc. Based on my (limited) experience, this is will be a slam dunk for these hives. They’ll be set before the end of September and I probably will not check them again until January.

The other 6 Nucs are in single, deep bodies. I have the same goal for this group that I had for the ones previously mentioned – get a second hive body of capped honey on top of them! I plan to do a little experimenting here, dividing the group into 3 sets of 2.

Set 1 will receive my typical strategy. They will include 2 strong Nucs that will get 2 mason jars today to get them in the ‘nectar consumption’ mode. Once they finish these jars (I’ll check all Nuc feeders every other day or so), I’ll drop a second Nuc body on them with 3 or more drawn frames and one or two frames with foundation. I’ll continue to feed them my normal syrup setup until they draw/cap the entire upper Nuc body or until the end of October.

Set 2 will receive a revised strategy. They will be treated like Set 1, but receive all foundation for the upper Nuc. I am interested to see how much wax a Nuc will draw in September. These Nucs will receive Medium upper Nucs, as I can drop capped frames from some of my Bank supers on mature hives in late October, if this experiment fails.

Set 3 includes my laggard queens. My goal here is really to simply get them to fill out a single, deep Nuc. They are starting with all drawn wax, but they will have an uphill battle (at least I think they will) because of the low number of bees. I doubt they can get a really good nurse bee set until the end of September. They simply do not have a lot of bees to build up a good Winter cluster. I could ‘rescue’ these bees with a frame of capped brood from my mature hives, but I’d like to see them make a go of it. This is really a ‘resources’ experiment for me. I am trying to find the bare minimum that I need for a good success rate for wintering Nucs. These Nucs will receive a bit more attention from me, mainly because I don’t want to open them up in the Spring and find some pest has destroyed the frames. I may also give them some capped frames later on, depending on what I see (if I open them up and find a golf ball-sized cluster, I will not be trying to save them!)

What should I be looking for now?

At my daughter’s birthday party, a fellow beekeeper asked me what I was looking for in my beehives now. He immediately followed up with well, what should I be looking for now? In my opinion, we are now creeping into a really important time of the year for this question, so I thought I’d share my answer.

To begin with, I am only trying to go into each of my hives once this month. It is usually a really dry and hot month for me and the bees do not appreciate my poking around too much. Plus, I really only need one look to accomplish my goals.

For most of my inspections, the first thing that I do is spot check any honey supers that are still on the hives. I never take frames for harvesting unless they are capped. This basically means that most of my hives end up with one partially worked super after my last extraction in early July. I usually put a second super (a wet one – recently extracted with honey still along the edges of the comb) on top of this after the extraction weekend (or week, as it happened this year!) I am checking these supers with three possible outcomes in mind. One, I may have a September extraction day if there are enough capped supers out there. Two, any capped (or even uncapped) medium supers might offer me a ‘bank’ of honey for any late swarms or cut-outs, an overwintered nuc or simply a young hive that never got to finish drawing out and capping their top super. I am not looking for more honey, so it takes a lot of capped supers for me to extract again. I also use this time to pull any drawn supers that they have cleaned out (they were probably put on ‘wet’ back in July) to reduce the space my bees need to maintain going into the Fall months (I’ve beaten the space issue into the ground in previous posts, so I will not drone on about it again here!) I usually put these supers above the inner cover with a note to come back and get them within the week.

The second thing I do in the majority of the inspections is to pull 1 frame from the upper hive body (Medium for me, mostly) and 1 from the lower hive body (Deep for me, mostly). My ideal hive today is a hive that has capped off 7+ frames of honey in the upper hive body. Actually, some of the middle frames will have nearly full honey where they were laying eggs and raising brood, but they will not have capped it off yet. I might find a frame or two of capped brood up here too. The bees are just waiting for those last bees to hatch and they should fill up that space with honey too, giving me a full, capped upper hive body by Winter. When I pull the frame in the lower hive body, I am just checking for capped brood. If I find larva, eggs or even the queen on this one frame, it is a bonus. But, if I find capped brood, I am comfortable that the hive is doing just fine.

So, my primary goal right now is to check the honey stores for Winter (and for my bank) and make sure that they still have a queen and all seems right. That’s what I do on the majority of the inspections. For a few, I am looking to mark queens and will take a bit more time going through the hive to find her. For various reasons (swarms, I forgot, etc…), I have (or had) about a dozen hives with unmarked queens going into August. It’s very important to me to have marked queens in all of my hives right now, as I want to be able to find them when I create Nuc’s next Spring (or raise queens, as the case may be!) But, these hives are the exceptions. I am ‘in-and-out’ of most of my hives very quickly.

As a postscript, here are the things that I look for to demonstrate a healthy hive (outside of honey) with a quick inspection. One, if they are raising drones, it means they believe that times are good. Honey bees do not waste resources raising those lazy males unless times are good. Two, I like to find a lot of bees on my inner cover. All things being equal, it tells me they are managing their space well and I do not have to remove any supers unless I want to. Three, I am constantly scanning all of my bees for problems. One bee with deformed wing virus is just fine by me. If I see three or more in a quick inspection, I know the hive is at risk and may require more management.

Feeding Recommendations

I just read an e-zine from Brushy Mountain that encourages everyone to be feeding their bees right now, thanks to the lack of rain and dearth of nectar. If you’re in an area of the country that is experiencing a multi-year, devastating drought (mostly the corn belt, like Iowa), this may be necessary (I have no experience with this kind of scenario in my beekeeping travails), but I do not believe it is necessary in our area (which may experience a month or two of drought in a given Summer.)

Bees are biological organisms, just like deer, birds and other insects. You don’t have to feed those organisms in our droughts and you shouldn’t have to feed your bees, unless you somehow have a genetic derelict in your apiaries. If you do have such a bee, one that cannot survive in our environment without external, man-driven measures, I would argue that you SHOULD let them perish. We do not need that kind of genetics in our area.

This discussion is particularly relevant today, based on the large number of queries that I have received about ‘should I be feeding my bees’ from local beekeepers. Based on my comments above, you might conclude that I never feed my bees. In fact, I do feed some of my bees, but very rarely in August (or July). I am a firm believer in feeding any new colony (caught by a swarm or purchased) until it has drawn out (drawn out refers to the frames of foundation and drawing each out with wax) whatever you consider to be the hive bodies. Drawing out wax takes a tremendous amount of resources and you sometimes get a new hive so late in the nectar flow that they have little chance of drawing out their living quarters before the flow is over (usually in June). To help them over this obstacle, feeding is a good thing. Once they have drawn out their living quarters, there is no natural reason to feed them again (but, I might change my tune if I ever experience a multi-year drought…)

But, do I feed my young hives in July and August? Unfortunately, there is no black-and-white answer to this. In my experience, if I have a young hive that has drawn out the lower hive body (for me, this is usually a Deep super), I will continue to feed in July/August as they finish drawing out the upper hive body (for me, this is typically a Medium super.) As long as I feed late in the day (when most troublesome foragers from other hives are already back home for the day and less likely to smell this new treat as I pour it into the hive), hives of this size have no problems keeping out potential robbers and benefit well from the feed. But, I also have brand new, queenless Nuc’s in my home yard at this time of year. These Nuc’s (for Overwintering) are not expected to fill out a full hive body. Instead, they only need to fill out 10 frames (5 in the lower Nuc and 5 in the upper Nuc.) In addition, in July and August, many of these Nuc’s experience a queenless period as they raise their new queens. I never feed a brand new Nuc that is queenless in July or August. Absolutely never. It seems to me that queenless nuc’s are at the greatest risk of being robbed out during this time of year. In fact, any Nuc has a high chance of being robbed out this time of year, but queenless Nuc’s seem to really be at risk. My goal with these hives is to get a laying queen before I feed and I try to hold off feeding until late August at the earliest.

Finally, I suppose it is possible that you could take too much honey from your hives during the honey harvest and then have to feed to make up for that mistake. I have never done this, so cannot really comment on it. In truth, I checked 3 outyards today and have lots of extra honey, including 1 fully drawn and capped Medium honey super (many of my spare supers are partially drawn and filled, but not capped.) As stated many times before, I definitely believe that you will end up with stronger bees if they are eating nectar-based honey over the Winter, as opposed to syrup-based. It may be the reason why I simply do not have Winter losses.

It should also be noted that:

1. I only use top feeders (see insert) for my full hives. In my opinion, this is the best kind of feeder for a full hive. So, when I am feeding my younger hives in July/August, it is with this kind of feeder. I would never use a boardman-style (or other external) feeder. Having feed hanging off the side of a hive is a big advertisement to other bees in the area.

2. I pretty much feed the same mixture all year. For me, it is basically 10 lbs of sugar mixed with 2 gallons of water. If you go by a ‘pint is a pound the world around’, this comes out to something like a 1.6 parts water to 1 part sugar.

September Swarm?

As often mentioned here, I do not do a lot of hive management after June. Usually, I’m in a hive once a month at most after the busy season (at least that’s how I currently do it.) There are risks to this approach, as with any approach. I wonder if I experienced one today!

Last weekend, I went to inspect the one weak hive that I should have whacked and converted into a couple of Nuc’s. This is actually one of the three Nuc’s that I purchased from another beekeeper in Varina last year (3 Nuc’s that were very inferior in my opinion, now that I have some experience in this stuff.) I overwintered the thing and let her start to build up. Unfortunately, by July, she had not done that well at all. I had wanted to requeen this hive in 2010, but the owner (my father – he ‘owns’ the hives but I manage them 100%) did not want to kill the existing queen. I think he felt sorry for her. Come this Spring, the Nuc appeared to be building up pretty nicely and I promoted her to a Deep and let her roll, eventually putting a Medium on her. In the end, that hive did very little after the initial build up. I let my father over rule me last year and this year (he still wanted to let the hive try to make it), but I will not do it in 2012.

Regardless, my father had put a feeder on the hive (as I always say, if you have to feed them this time of year, they are either new hives (this one was not), you took too much honey in the Spring (this one never had supers to even put honey in) or the queen is inferior (that’s my vote.) At any rate, I had looked at his feeder and decided that these bees couldn’t even take feed like a good hive. So, I was going to give the hive one of my ‘storage’ frames (a Deep that had a little honey and a little pollen on it). I wanted to get them storing honey from that feeder.

Well, when I got out to the hive last weekend, I found that they had finally figured out how to take the syrup and were working it hard. I decided not to bother them and took my deep frame back to my home yard. Having a ton of chores, I took the ‘storage frame’ and put it into one of my old Deep boxes and went to work on my yard (why do today what you can put off to tomorrow…ugh!)

Of course, I forgot about the frame until yesterday, when I noticed a ton of bees going into and out of that Deep. Well, it appears the starter hives in my backyard have found that daggone Deep – I FORGOT about that daggone thing! Last night (when robbers would be home and I could safely get the frame), I felt horribly (again, laziness seems to be the theme of this post) and put it off for tonight…

This morning, I was set to go out and put some entrance reducers on a few hives in Charles City (and I need to check on the queen of two more hives before I am satisfied) and decided to get that daggone frame now, using my bee brush to get the bees off of it and dropping it into the freezer for a few days in case the SHB or wax moth had gotten some eggs in it.

WHOA! I pulled the top off of that Deep and there were a few thousand bees all clumped on it. This wasn’t robbing! It was a daggone September swarm!

So, there you have it. For one, this is the first September swarm that I have been involved with (a fellow beekeeper in my area said he picked one up a few years ago, about the size of a baseball – this one was bigger then that, but only a little – a bit bigger then two softballs). Secondly, I assume this was from one of my starter hives (all of those queens were marked, so I will know in a week or two when I inspect them), but this goes back to the original risk – I wasn’t fully inspecting these starter hives and missed this swarm. I’ll have to check them all over the next week to make sure a new queen came out. It would really be cool if it turns out to be from a nearby feral hive (but I doubt it.)

At any rate, I moved the swarm into a Nuc and gave them 3 more frames of fully drawn wax (with some resources.) They only have one frame of foundation, which I gave them since most swarms like to draw out wax like monsters. Finally, I put both a boardman and a top feeder on them. The goal is for them to fill out this Nuc before the end of September and then I’ll drop another Nuc with resources on top of them. I normally do not overwinter Nuc’s like this, but I have the resources to do so and it should be good fun (I don’t think many September swarms make it – but I plan to give these guys a big shot!)

Pre-Winter Inspections Started

I went into a little over half of my hives this weekend, breaking them down (frame-by-frame) until I found a queen or eggs or larva. I have been hearing murmurings of starving bees (we have had a real drought in parts of central Virginia, near Richmond) and mite problems. I can’t speak to the latter (I do not treat for mites, so I rarely do a mite drop count – haven’t done a one this year), but I can say that none of my bees are starving (well, none of the 18 hives that I checked anyway). In fact, I am very pleased.

The bees that were bringing in nectar in late June ended up capping off another round of supers (well, one capped a Shallow and a Medium and another capped a Shallow), not including the substantial capped honey in the brood nest (Deep-Medium set-up). Unfortunately, that outyard was my first inspection, which gave me really high hopes for the rest of the yards. For the most part, nothing else came close to that first set of hives. Clearly, location makes a big difference (something about that location on the James – tons of blooming clover, I am guessing, with good rain (while the rest of us suffered!)) I am not sure if I will extract those supers or not at this point. I will wait until mid-September to make that call (and after I have checked all of my hives.)

Nearly every hive had capped 90% of the Medium of their brood chamber (again, I run a Deep and a Medium for the bee’s home, year round, so this is where they need to store what they will need for the Winter.) A few hives were sitting on uncapped Mediums (I’d guess 70% full), but these were all starter hives from this year (Nuc’s, swarms or cut-outs). I even found a few queens, although I wasn’t looking for them. The Berkeley Hive actually still has the old Blue Queen from last year. I’m sure they will look to swarm next year.

The goal of all of the work last weekend was to make a spot check on the bees. In some cases, these bees had capped Mediums in late June. Some folks had told me that bees will eat into these stores if they are left on the hive. I definitely did not find that. I ran this experiment in 4 different outyards, 3 of which I checked this past weekend. The bees did not eat into their stores. They didn’t add to the stores (in most cases), but neither did they eat into them. But, this is August and we still have the month of September to make it through. Regardless, I now know the 3 hives that I need to watch (late splits from this year that do not seem to have made a lot of progress in filling up their upper Medium’s), out of this initial run. I think it is good to go into the hives in late August to get a feel for what things look like. Verify that you have a queen and make a note of the stores. In my area, to the east of Richmond, I have never seen a lot of build up after August, so you pretty much need to have good stores now. It also helps you find queen problems (per my last post).

I am glad to be going into the Winter strong (so far.) I have a feeling that I am going to lose some hives this year (the law of averages – I haven’t lost a single one yet, except for a Nuc that I starved by not giving enough food…) More hives to check over the next couple of weeks and then (with the exception of my hive with the virgin queen) I doubt I will mess with them again before I do the Winter Prep in late September. Wish me luck!

SHB Follow-up: Per my July post, I ran into a bit of a SHB problem with one of my hives this year (thanks to my inept beekeeping!) I ended up combining the hive with one of my starter hives and using some SHB traps to try to keep them at bay. Of course I probably should be knocking on wood, but I inspected both hives in that outyard this weekend and things look really good. I probably noticed 2 or 3 SHB when I cracked the inner cover (this is NORMAL in my neck of the woods and not a problem if the hive is healthy) and found a ton in all of the traps. I think the bees kept them at bay and the traps probably helped out a bit. I removed the traps and let the bees continue on with their business.

No Queen!

This is not an uncommon exclamation in my neck of the woods (Henrico County, to the east of Richmond, Va) – I doubt it’s uncommon anywhere. A beekeeper goes into a (previously strong, in many cases) hive, only to find no eggs, no larva and no capped brood. It’s been a grueling summer (insert year) and there simply has not been enough time (or energy) to put on a bee suit, sweat 10 buckets of water and go through an irritable hive of bees (no bee likes to be inspected in July!) In many cases, the beekeeper suddenly noticed a decrease in activity and decides to have a check. In a few cases, it is simply a matter of a cool day (and a chance to finally have a peak without the risk of expiring!)

You open up the hive and things look good. We see some stored honey, although maybe the bee population is a bit low. You finally get into the lower brood box and alarm bells start to go off. Not only do you not see eggs, but you also do not see capped brood. Vast areas of the brood nest remain open! What the devil is going on!?!? The first response (typically – based on queries I get from the occasional new beekeeper) is that the queen is dead and all is lost!

In truth, if you do lose your queen in September (in our area – Central Virginia), you are in a pretty tough pickle. The queen should be ramping up production of the first few Winter bees in early September. These bees are fatter and meant to live a bit longer then the normal bee. They are not designed to forage so much as to provide warmth and go get a bit of water or maybe some old grass pollen in January. Few born in September make it to the next Spring, but they are the first wave that will eventually propel your October & November bees all the way to February and March. This is the beginning of Winter prep and its very tough to be without a queen at this time of the year.

But, I have found that many of my strong hives (even with space) go queenless in July-August. I actually believe it is good for them and for the lands around my hives. Today, I began my first Winter checks. I went to check a new outyard in Varina, Virginia. I had take two starter hives (one from the Larry super-Queen and one from a hived Swarm) to this spot in early July. I wanted to see how they were doing. Both hives had done really well with regard to pollen and honey. You want to be sure that your hives have a good store of both when going into the Winter. A late August check is not a guarantee in my neck of the woods, but I use it to identify clear danger hives. Last year, for example, I found one and combined it with the Apache hive. That hive ended up being a super strong hive this year. I doubt the weak hive (Moe) would have made it otherwise.

The very first hive that I opened had a medium that was 90% full of capped honey. Interestingly enough, this was nearly exactly what they looked like in early July (I did a test this year and measured honey stores in early July to see how much my bees would eat in the awful weather of July and August). They had barely touched it. In addition, they had a couple of deep frames that were both 90% full of capped honey and 3 frames of pollen (not full frames, but mostly pollen.) From just those notes, I’d say these gals were ready to make a good go of it this Winter. But, the next ‘note’ was important. The entire brood nest (maybe 6 frames) was empty except for a handful of capped brood (and I do mean a handful – maybe 50, all told.) I must admit that I would probably have freaked were it not for what I found on the very first frame (Deep) that I pulled. A small, unmarked queen! I have my notes that I marked a large, brown queen in May (White), so I was certain this was a new queen. I knew something was up when I found her on the first frame – the old gals somehow always manage to get on the LAST frame during the inspection.

So, noticing a few capped brood, I decided that I had a real virgin on my hands. She probably had not even done a maiden flight. And that’s the kicker. Had I opened the hive a week from now, during (say) 3 pm or so, I probably wouldn’t have found her. But, I would have found no eggs and no brood. Without any other knowledge, I might have freaked and combined them with one of my Nucs for overwintering. But, I have seen this before. For whatever reason (either my area, my line of bees or bees in general), some of my hives will cast a swarm in July, regardless of the weather. I seriously doubt the swarm did very well (hot and dry with no blooms out there), but I do have a new queen. I am not so sure they did swarm, given the number of bees, the lack of any sign of a queen cell and the abundance of capped honey (they didn’t take much with them, if they did swarm). It could have been a supercedure. Regardless, I have a new queen and (big benefit) my bees just went through a dearth of eggs which should set the mites back substantially. A perfect time for a perfect storm.

But, the main reason that I’m glad that I checked is that I know to go back to this hive in 2 (3 at the most) weeks to check for eggs. This outyard is my most distant Varina outyard, so only 1 hive is within 3 miles. The owner had told me in June that they hadn’t seen a honey bee in years. So, I need to cross my fingers for a good mating.

Cool Weather Arrives

It is going to get down in the 40’s this week, so my bees are about to get their first taste of cold weather (even the queens have not been through a winter yet!) Both hives seem fairly active and I have actually seen them on both the buckwheat and some of the asters, which is a very positive sign (I rarely seen the wenches on any of my plants, despite the fact that I have tons of different plants blooming all Summer long…)

Hive 1, the Strong Gals, should do well this Winter, although I have not opened them up for a thorough inspection yet. They still have the honey super on them, but I’ve yet to see any honey getting stored. I will probably smoke them this weekend and take the super off, to let them get prepped for Winter. I also want to see if they are having any major problems with hive beetles or (more likely) wax moths. They are so grumpy this time of year that I really do not like poking into their home. They will try (and probably succeed) to sting me for sure, but I need to have a look.

Hive 2 is always a mystery. They look strong. The feeder has a ton of them eating the sugar water and I see a bunch of training flights even now. They definitely ‘look’ better then they did most of the Summer, but every time that I look into the hive, there is only very minor progress. I did not look last weekend, but will take a stronger look this weekend. Last weekend, I basically just eyeballed them and put a second deep on the hive, even though they had not fully filled out 8 frames in their bottom deep. I did find the queen this time, so she was not usurped after all. But, putting the second deep on may have been a mistake, effectively giving the wax moths a free place to breed and wreak havoc. So, we’ll see what it looks like this weekend.