Shape Up or Ship Out

With the onset of the cool weather, it is time to begin preparing our honey bees for winter.  All of the honey supers are now off the hives and the honey has been extracted from the frames.  We put the empty frames and honey extractor out in the back yard for the bees to clean up before we store them away for the winter.  It is a job they are taking very seriously - there are bees everywhere!  I think even the bees from the neighbour's hive two doors down have found them.  It is a real community effort.

A honey raiding bonanza.  A photo cannot capture it but there are
hundreds of bees cleaning out our honey extractor.

Back in the bee yard, I have changed out all the screened bottom boards for solid wood ones - less ventilation but warmer during the cool nights.  I have also started feeding each hive a sugar syrup mixture to help them store up enough honey to last them through the winter.  Since there are less and less natural sources of nectar outside as blossoms on flowers and trees die off, it is important for the bees to have an easily accessible source of sugar to make into honey.  In the fall we feed 2:1 sugar:water syrup.  The bees love it and each hive is able to drain a pail in as little as three days.  Each pain contains about 3L of granulated sugar - which for five hives is a LOT of sugar.

Getting ready to place the white pail full of sugar syrup on the hive.

I did a thorough hive inspection yesterday and on the whole things are looking good.  We have two trouble hives, they are the ones that swarmed late and were trying to grow new hives on the underside of the bottom boards.  One of the hives has a queen but is a weak hive with a smaller number of bees that it should have at this time of year.  The other hive is currently queenless - eeks!  However, there was a queen cell in the hive last week, which has now hatched.  I am going to give both hives another week to get themselves straightened out and if they still do not have a queen or are showing a weak egg laying pattern - I will re-queen them.  Shape up or ship out!

Hive inspections.  Luckily I still fit in my bee suit though it is getting pretty tight around the tummy!

While preparing the hives for winter I removed a frame from the hive that offers a very good illustration of eggs that have been laid in the comb.  It is quite hard to see eggs while inspecting the hive so I was thrilled to finally see them in real life.

Can you see the tiny white egg in the middle of each of the cells?  Amazing.