This September has really felt like the end of the active beekeeping season, what with the increasingly wet weather, colder days and darker evenings. However, we have managed to take advantage of some of the nicer days to do quite a few essential jobs before we leave the bees tucked up for winter.

Again, the main job has been to feed the bees. Each colony has received roughly the same amount of Ambrosia syrup, basically, as much as the English feeder will hold! This has given all the bees the option to take the syrup if they need it. We fed initially in August and have fed again in September as we want to give the bees the best head start into autumn, before it is too cold to feed syrup.

As always, when feeding syrup, we tried to do this on days where the bees were not so active, to reduce the amount of robbing. However, when bees get a taste for it, any tiny splash will cause a frenzy, as you can see from this video.  This didn’t last very long however, as a downpour was right around the corner and put an abrupt end to their robbing activities.

This month, we decided on Apivar for our varroa treatment. This is because it has been found to be very successful, due to the long treatment period and it is not temperature dependent. This will be left in for the full 10 weeks, at which point it will be removed to avoid any resistant mites that may develop.

A couple of smaller colonies were united this month as one had turned into a drone layer. This was merged using the newspaper method with one of the smaller colonies, to give them both the best chance of surviving the winter. We also merged any colonies that were on double brood back down to single brood by taking out any empty or damaged frames and confining the bees to one box. This should keep the space the bees have to keep warm down to a minimum, whilst ensuring the frames kept in the hive are useful to the bees with either brood or food in them.

With the colder weather approaching, we have introduced insulation quilts to some of the smaller colonies, just to give them that little bit of extra warmth. For now, these have been placed on top of the feeders, but when the bees have finished taking the syrup, the feeder can be removed and the quilt placed directly onto the crownboard. If supers with food for the winter are to be left on top, queen excluders should be removed to give the bees the best chance of reaching the food.

There have also been a couple of smaller odd jobs to do around the apiary this September. We have made sure that the entrances to the hives are clear from weeds and grass – it sounds obvious but everything has grown so quickly here recently and entrances can soon become blocked off, making it hard for the bees to find their way in. You can see from this photo that the weeds had grown over the entrance and needed removing:

With the wasps still around, the Wasp-Outs have been left on the hives so far, but we checked inside the contraption to make sure the entrances were not blocked up with dead bees, for example. This again, just makes it easier for the bees to make their way in and out of the hive.

As the bees’ activities start to wind down for winter, you would hope it would be the same for the beekeeper. But we all know that is not quite the case and next month there will be plenty of little jobs to keep us busy!