Getting ready for winter...

Here I am on Remember Everyone Deployed (RED) Friday, finishing up feeding the hives some sugar syrup so they can build up their stores for winter.  As the weather gets cooler, and the days shorter, the queens will slow down their egg laying and start preparing winter bees.  A normal worker bee only lives about 7 weeks, that's why the queen is so prolific in the spring and summer.  As we get close to winter, the eggs will be treated differently and hatch winter bees that are fatter and will last through the season.  These bigger bees will require less honey and provide more heat to keep the core of the hive and the queen warm.  

It's early autumn and Goldenrod and Spanish Needle are in bloom here, both of which are great sources of pollen and nectar and I caught one of my (probably) girls working the Spanish Needle in my backyard.

Both hives are doing well.  The queens, Dolly, in the traditional hive, and Sunshine, in the horizonal hive are laying strongly with lots of eggs and brood during the last two weeks.  I've actually seen Dolly twice in the last three inspections, after going almost all spring and summer without seeing any of my queens.  This is not her, but she looks almost exactly like this.

I think she's new though, having superseded the old queen at the beginning of the month.  The only time I've seen Sunshine was the day I caught the swarm.  But I know she's there, because she's still making more bees.  I had put a medium sized box, called a super, on the traditional hive once it had requeened itself, hoping to get some fall honey.  But the bees were not drawing out the frames at all, with all their effort going to the brood box and winter prep, so I removed the box and am storing the frames away for the winter.  Once I see the queen is back to laying in the spring, I'll break them out and hopefully get some honey.

I'm considering buying one of those net style electric fences to put around the hives.  A bear has been spotted in our vicinity but I have not seen him on my hive camera, thank goodness.  But I'd like to discourage him if he does find it.  Contrary to what you learned with Winnie the Pooh, bears do not attack honey bee hives for the honey, but for the bees.  They're after the protein that the bees provide, not the sugar from the honey.  They get the honey when eating the bees, but that's not their primary goal.  Skunks will also eat the bees if they can get them.  That's why I keep my hives strapped down, so that they can't get them easily.  I'm going to make them work for it a little bit.  I did have a visitor to my bee yard last week.  He didn't molest the hives so all good.

With winter approaching and the bees settling in for the winter, I'll probably only be out in the bee yard to check food stores and feed, so there will be fewer updates but we'll be back up and going once the weather starts to get better in late February/early March.