Tasks for your Central Oregon Apiary
Well, summer is over …… at least for we beekeepers. Ok, ok, we humans still have some awesome
weather left, but our bees are working on Autumn.
Now’s the time to finish up with the Fall preparation for
our colonies. Remember, going into
winter we need to have healthy, well provisioned, well populated winter bees
with a strong queen. MOST everything we
can do now is working toward that goal, with the caveat that our colonies are
now trying to ramp down for winter.
So…..If you have a weak colony, it’s time to bite the bullet
and either bulk them up with bees and brood from another colony, or combine
with another colony. At this point,
unluckily, they are unlikely to make it back to a sustainable population.
Your mite levels should be at the lowest level you can
achieve or the highest level you’ll accept.
Use the HBHC tools for varroa management for specifics, and if your
levels are dramatically high, think about a quick knock down (say formic)
accepting that you might cause brood or queen loss (a high mite level in the
autumn leaves VERY little chance of making it through the winter) whereas for a
slightly higher than acceptable count you could use a less dramatic (easier on
the bees) treatment (say essential oils).
For food stores, my rule of thumb is no less that 60% full
of honey (less than about 80% and I won’t be surprised to do some emergency
feeding in early spring). If the colony
is less than %100 full of honey and brood (I want them to backfill the empty
brood cells with honey now) I’ll feed 2:1 syrup (other experienced and well-read
beekeepers like to always feed 1:1 syrup) through this month.
If your queen just isn’t doing the job (you’ll frequently
see this from a general lack of population or spotty (not caused by mites)
pattern, and you can get a replacement it’s a good time to requeen.
Finally, robbing. As
I like to say, honey bees aren’t smart, but they’re not stupid either. It’s a lot easier to steal honey from the
weak neighbor than to gather and cure it yourself. Once it starts, it’s quite difficult to
stop. The main way to avoid robbing is
to keep you hive strong, but also you can avoid leaving the hive opened too
long during inspections, open or visible feeding, or leaving bits and pieces
around in the open for the bee to “clean up”.
Hopefully your harvest went well and you’ve had a successful
summer season.
Allen Engle
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