The roadsides are bright yellow with bitterweed; pink-flowered
smartweed covers any damp ground; and field margins bloom with goldenrod and various
colors of fall asters. It is time to start preparing the hives for winter. The
queens have gradually reduced their egg laying through the end of summer. Now,
we would like to extend their egg production throughout October so that the
colonies will have plenty of longer-lived worker bees going into winter. Unlike
the bees that emerge in spring and summer which have a short lifespan, late
season bees can survive the winter. These workers will be the ones that produce
the food for the first brood reared early next year. We can stimulate the queen
to continue to lay eggs by feeding protein to the hives. An easy way to do this
is to place pollen substitute inside a weather-protected container outside the
hives.
Our bees must have plenty of honey in the hives to eat over
winter. If the hives are short on honey stores now, reduce hive entrances and
feed sugar syrup to help the bees build up adequate food stores. It is
important that the honey is positioned in the hives so that the bees can access
it during cold weather. There should be some honey on the sides of the brood
nest and plenty of honey above the brood. If one hive has more frames of capped
honey than will be needed, the beekeeper may move some of these frames to hives
that are short on honey stores. If queen excluders were used, we must remove
them from the hives in the fall. Since bee clusters move upward in the hive during
the winter, it is possible for a queen to be left trapped below a queen
excluder accidentally left in a hive. A final issue in fall hive preparation
regards ventilation. We must make sure that there is adequate air flow,
especially at the top of the hive. Today’s photo: fall asters.
--Richard