Bee Chronicles

1 October, 2019

What a September. I am thinking it was about 27 August the last time I got precipitation. That is rain in the local vernacular. We have gone nearly 6 weeks and it is pretty dry out there.

The result is there is no nectar in any of the beautiful fall flowers. Lots of asters along with the golden rod and iron weed. I have heard reports of Japanees Knot weed. I don't have any in my neighborhood, but it is supposed to make a good fall honey and lots of it. It would be interesting to know if it is producing nectar?

The impact is that fall feeding has been and will be very important to storing winter honey. Without the nectar flow the queen will stop laying eggs impacting the number of young healthy bees you have next spring. The more spring bees the faster the colonies will develop. It is not just a factor of surviving the winter, you want to have lots of bees survive.

I like to see nice brood patterns Thanksgiving weekend.

I am seeing orange, yellow, and light tan pollen coming into the hives. This has been in good quantities which is necessary now for the fall brood and enough extra stored for starting the spring brood.

My hive beetle counts are low. The stronger the hive the less beetles. You don't want beetles laying eggs in the honey. The larvae will hatch and contaminate the honey making it ferment in the hive. This reduces the amount of food available to the bees. Generally, a strong hive will keep the beetles corralled of to the side so they can't lay eggs in the honey. Kill the beetles as you see them with the "wak a mole" technique. Oxalic acid fumigation will kill some of the beetles.

Make sure your entrance reducers are in place, this will keep mice out now. It will also reduce the number of European Wasps that can get into the hive as the bees can defend a small opening better. The wasps seem to be more numerous in my area than they have ever been before. They cleaned out one of my weaker hives before I noticed. I have been checking every week as I feed the colonies.

My only recommendation now is keep feeding and keep up on varroa mite treatments. Fall is the time to prepare your hives for the spring.