Busy bees

The end of August is a strange time as a beekeeper. On one hand, the pollen and nectar action is supposed to be waining, and any honey a hive is going to produce should be complete. This means the bees inside should be “finishing” (drying) the capped honey they have created and stored, and we are supposed to start removing the boxes (called “supers”) that contain just honey so it can be extracted for use. At the same time, we are supposed to start feeding 2:1 sugar:water to the hives so they can bulk up any open spaces in their remaining boxes (the ones that will stay in place all winter) so they can survive the long and cold season. We also need to treat for mites ones the honey supers are removed and possibly feed them some pollen patties to encourage the laying of new brood. Bees that are born in the fall have special hormones that enable them to live 6+ months instead of the summer honeybee 6+ week lifespan.

So there typically would be a lot of shifting of hive components in preparation for the new season.

We use this lined 5-gallon bucket to carry around our beekeeping supplies.

Beekeeping gloves are a dirty, sticky mess!

However - our bees are just plain strange. Three of our five hives have been fed ALL summer. Two of those hives were captured from swarms; one was a newly-purchased package this spring. We have been feeding these three hives all summer because they just weren’t making any progress on their own. Meaning they weren’t building out the “comb” (the little way hexagons that store honey, pollen, and brood) on the frames fast enough to ensure they would have enough stores for winter. So with these three hives we weren’t concerned about getting any honey from them (you don’t really typically take honey from a first-year hive anyway). The bulk of their energy goes to building out that comb and then populating it with honey stores and eggs. But even first-year hives would not typically be fed sugar water ALL summer. The same thing happened with one of our new hives last year - we had to feed it all summer. The summer sugar water is 1:1. With fall rolling around, feeding has to be changed to a thicker 2:1 sugar:water mixture (because they do not have enough time to fully process the thinner stuff.)

This is how I make up a large batch of 1:1 syrup. I fill one 5-gallon bucket with a tap to a pre-marked line. I fill another (below) with sugar up to a pre-marked line. It takes most of, but not all, of the giant bag of sugar. This is regular granulated sugar. It is added to the water bucket. I then install a long mixer attachment on the power drill and mix it all until it dissolves. We pop a lid on it and it lasts for quite awhile. This bulk process works better than what I used to do which was one mason jar of sugar, one mason jar of water, one jar of sugar, one jar of water. This took forever, and we were pretty sure we never quite counted correctly.

So - there are three weirdo hives that have a lot of bees, a lot of action, but who have been fed 1:1 syrup all summer. Now we have to figure out exactly when to switch them to 2:1 syrup and to figure out how many boxes we will leave on over the winter. We also need to get in there to the lower boxes and see exactly what we are sending them into winter with. Weird (because of the all-summer feeding buffet), but doable.

This is the hive we caught from the swarm in the tree that it is next to. We really like this shady, protected spot along the goat fence and under the little tree, so we will probably leave it here. This hive is unusual because at the moment we caught the swarm I did not have any "deep" frames., so I used the shallower "supers" for the bottom layers on the hive. Typically hives will have 1-2 deep boxes on the bottom, because the bottom of the hive is where the queen lays the eggs. So these "brood" boxes have a combination of brood and honey, but this is not honey for humans to use, just for the colony itself. Because I didn't have any deep frames I couldn't use deep boxes. This was an unexpected swarm. There is nothing physically different about the Deep vs. Super frames other than size. So if you typically leave a hive with two deeps over the winter, with this hive we will have to leave them with at least three supers, maybe all four on there now. (That top box is where their sugar syrup is stored, so that goes away after feeding season.) The tricky thing is somehow labeling these frames because they are super frames which typically means "for humans", but these particular super frames are made with sugar water and even if there is honey in there it is only for bees.

I also love this hive because Montana scrubbed and stained all of the boxes, it looks neat. What I find interesting about this picture is that unlike our older hives, none of the bees have any pollen on their legs. Maybe I've created lazy bees because I am feeding them syrup!

These are the other two fed-all-summer first-year hives on the other side of the little apple tree by the goats. They are a slightly narrower 8-frame size (vs. 10) because we purchased a bunch of 8-frame equipment this summer. (You can see some of the decorating the seller's daughter did on some of the boxes, cute.) These have the flat metal roofs, which are the standard design for hives. I bought three of the "peaked" style roofs when we first started because I love the way they look. But functionally we love these flat-tops way more, because when you are working on one hive you can set stuff on top of the other.
Again with these we will have to decide whether to winter them over with a deep and one or two of the supers above.

Our other two hives are our carryovers from 2023. They are positioned on a high table Montana built, next to the pumphouse. we chose this pumphouse location because it offered at least a little protection. But we have so many water problems and issues that require us to constantly be in the pumphouse. So “Hello, water service man, please help us - I hope you’re not allergic to bees!”