Autumn

After the honey harvest its back into hive inspections, and we begin the process of ‘wintering down.’ Similar to Spring inspections where we check for pests and diseases and manage these where necessary, but we also make decisions around if hives have enough honey stores to see them through the winter and make sure that each hive has a healthy queen. Autumn is the last chance to replace her if we need to.

The population of a hive reduces significantly in Autumn preparing for the winter months. During Winter bees don’t reproduce so unfortunately for the male bees, known as drones, there is no need for them. To conserve resources they are kicked out of the hive. Don’t be alarmed if you see dead bees at the front of a hive during late Autumn, this is most likely to be the drones.

We also add entrance reducers to our hives to deter wasps and rodents. Wasps can really hassle beehives in the Autumn and Winter months, they are active during cooler temperatures and take every chance they get to steal honey from beehives. We hang wasp traps with lure out near each of our apiaries to catch them too.

Mice like trying to setup shop in a beehive over the winter, it’s a lot warmer inside than outside but they cause damage to the frames and chew on the beeswax. Our entrance reducers stop mice from being able to enter a hive and give the bees a smaller front door to guard.

Finally we may reduce the space, removing empty brood boxes and making sure the bees have honey all around them. Wintering down properly is crucial to ensuring that a colony can survive winter.