Going into the Fall

Since my last post, the new queen was accepted into hive #4. We pulled the honey supers off of all of the hives. There was very little capped honey from my hives here, and nothing from Burr Farm. I was hopeful that the rain at that time would help the flowers to produce nectar, but I guess it wasn’t enough for an overflow into the honey supers. The bees kept it all for themselves, which that is fine.

Our normal process for removing the honey supers, is to shake the bees off of the frames, brush off the stragglers into the hive, place the bee free honey frame into the an empty honey supper into a box with a lid. A week later, after we took the honey supers off of the hives at Burr Farm, we locked them up into the hive in the evening by placing metal, vented L shaped entrance blockers on them so majority of the bees were contained in the hive, and the next day, we picked up the hives and transported them home. The hives felt light and it made it easy for move but I was concerned for the bees’ food stores.

At home I did a different method, as I was solo, I checked a few frames which in the honey supers, they were pretty much empty and there was a quarter frame of honey, that did I find and left those frames for the bees rob, and I allowed the bees to find there own way home. As nightfall fell, there were from what I saw 20-50 bees still on the frames, yet I felt the need to bring the honey supers in, as I didn’t want to attract bears. So I brought the five honey super boxes into my bee room, placed some netting over them, and thought I secured the bottom. My idea was to release those bees and they could find their way back to their hives. Unfortunately, there was a way for the bees to escape and found quite a few at the window screens. I released them into the outside.

Since the removal of the honey supers, I have been feeding the bees. I placed pollen patties, sugar blocks, and been feeding sugar syrup to the bees, along with providing a pollen substitute to the pollen feeders. They seem to be hungry. There is a great attraction to the pollen feeders, and also my water bottle that I was using outside when painting the casing for my door to my bee room. Every time I took a sip, there were 4-5 bees checking it out. My goal is to get the bees on the right tract for winter, there is still a bit to do.

I would like to thank Burr Farm for the opportunity to have my bees at the farm. I am looking forward to keeping them there next year and appreciate the learning experience. Thank you for reading and bee kind.