Starting Fall Management.

It's mid August so I'm preparing to do some Fall/Winter management.  I did a sticky board count for Varroa in both hives over the weekend and fortunately I think there is little to concern me.  The Parent hive had 1 mite and the Daughter 24 mites, both in 48 hour periods.  So no chemical treatments required as yet - horray!  I will do another check in a week or so, just to satisfy myself the mite levels remain manageable. Similarly I will check on the beetles; their numbers still trouble me.

So my Fall preparations began.  I did a reverse on both hives as there was brood in the top hive boxes, but not in the bottom hive boxes.  I hope moving the brood will stimulate some more brood rearing in the few weeks that are left before the queen slows and finally stops laying for the winter. By the time winter comes around I hope the brood will be nicely established in the top hive box and will be surrounded by stores.

I fed the Parent hive some 2:1 syrup in a Division Board Feeder; about 3.75 litres. There isn't much in the way of stores in the hive, so I will be feeding in earnest over the next few weeks.  With luck the varroa count will remain low in the hive and so I can continue to feed.  If I find the bees are really packing the syrup away I may even try to get the bees to draw out the empty foundation in the spare hive body I removed the other day.  I think this is a bit optimistic, as the bees really haven't been interested in foundation bulding this year.

The situation in the Daughter hive is more interesting.  There is honey in the supers (probably in excess of 10 lbs) but I want this to be in the hive bodies. Therefore, in an attempt to encourage the bees to move it down into the hive I have moved the inner cover between the hive bodies and the supers.  Eugene assures me this does work, but how reliable it is only time will tell.  I'll check the progress in a couple of days time to see how much has been moved.  This method is at least better than leaving the supers out in the open for robbing by all and sundry in the neighbourhood! I guess if the honey does gets moved I will start to feed this hive with syrup until I am happy sufficient quantities have been stored.

I think the next 4 to 6 weeks will be very interesting indeed!