What are you guys seeing now? My neighborhood hives are really looking good and working hard. Lots of goldenrod here and at the farm. I have feeders on a couple of hives at the farm. Added robber screens and taped up the top entrance hole prior to adding the top feeders. I did lose the one hive during Varroa treatment but that was my fault for leaving an opening and they were robbed out and absconded. Completed Apiguard treatment last week on all the hives. Looks like I started the summer with 2 hives and will go into winter with 8. I did manage to get several supers of drawn comb this summer so that should help next year. Learned that I need to keep tabs on the bottom supers during the summer. I accidentally moved a queen when trying to make a split earlier in the summer and the hive never really got back on track. Bad thing is that the split didn't make it either. I'm bad about not wanting to disturb the bottom and just see if they need more room up top.

Brad: what are you planning on planting for the bees next summer? I need something for after late June. I robbed mine this summer around July 4 and I feel like they need something to boost them around then. I can plant around an acre or so just for the bees and I may try buckwheat if that worked well for you.

Goals for next summer: Get a least 2 of the hives to put on 4 or 5 supers on honey each and split some of the others to get to 12-15 hives.

I haven't checked inside a hive in 6 weeks or so. They are bringing in large amounts of pollen

Regarding planting for next year, it's gonna be hard to find anything that does better than the Buckwheat did. I doubt we get the copious amounts of rain next summer so it may not be as productive.

I'd like to give the Hubam clover another try but there are no good weed control chemicals for it and it had Palmer Amaranth seed in it. I had never had one sprig of the Amaranth until I planted the Hubam

Thanks. The last thing I need at the sod farm is another variety of amaranth to deal with. I turkey hunted a farm in Lowndes County last spring that had an amazing amount of clover and he agreed to let me put a couple of hives down there next spring. Hopefully the deer will not hit the buckwheat too bad. I have irrigation so that should help some.

One thing I did notice on most of my hives is that they are lighter than I had hoped they would be at this time of the year. Hoping they will have a good run the next couple of weeks.

I think the reason they are lighter is because they (mine anyway) did not take a brood break this summer. There was enough nectar coming in to keep them brooding but there wasn't enough coming in to keep up with what they needed without dipping into their reserves.

I will hit mine hard and fast with syrup closer to the end of the month. I don't want to stimulate brood rearing, I just want to feed them up to weight for the winter.

I'm seriously considering using sugar blocks this winter too.

Brad,

Do you leave robber screens on in the fall/winter or do you pull them off and use wooden entrance reducers?

Just got the easiest swarm I ever got. Guy called and had it back at the house in 15 minutes. Don’t know if they’ll make it but gonna try. Got a few frames of comb but don’t want to put any brood in there yet from my others unless I just have too. Should have plenty of honey for them from the other hives though. Also gonna feed them to to help me out.

I leave my screens on all year. They aren't really robber screens, they're just #8 hardware cloth that covers about 75%-80% of the entrance. I guess it would be best called a ventilated entrance reducer. I don't block any ventilation in the summer or winter, except on small hives, very late winter early in the spring.

There's lots that I don't know but I've never heard of a swarm this time of year. I caught a "swarm" about 2 months ago and I'm fairly sure they weren't a swarm. I figure that they absconded from their hive due to wax moths, small hive beetles or excessive mites.

You'll need to feed the snot out of them and give them a frame of pollen for certain if they're going to make it. If you've got a hive that's really strong they can probably give up a frame of pollen, but I'd check to make sure it's not the only frame of it that they have. Mine are still bringing in lots of Goldenrod pollen. If you don't have any around your house, move them to a source of Goldenrod. They can't make the "winter" bees they've got to have without pollen.

I put my swarm boxes in the shed a month ago. (Open sides) I was getting tree stands out last weekend and I commented to my BIL that is a lot of bees flying around an empty box. I looked closer and I had bees going in and out of one of the traps. I'm going to check it again this weekend and if there is a box of bees there I may try and combine them with a small hive or baby them over the winter in a nuc box. I'm really hoping I didn't get a small bunch of bees this late in the year. In a strange way it could be the hive that absconded due to the robbing. Only 500 yards from there.

Good luck with yours though Country. Gonna be some work to get those thru till April.

Thanks. I actually built robber screens. I think I'm going to take them off and put the wooden reducers on for the winter.

yea its gonna be tough but figured it was worth the try. had to look yesterday and the queen needs some fattening up. I actually figured the hurricane may of had something to do with it. is that possible?

And just like that they left yesterday late or today. She had eggs in one of the frames. Just don’t make no sense.

I did a cut out late last year, maybe in July. They only stayed a few days and left.