Fall Is Upon Us

Wild Flowers in Chanhassen

Even though autumn does not arrive before September 23; the honey bees in Minnesota know better. They are preparing themselves for the long anticipated winter months by foraging the last drops of nectar, and grains of pollen that they will store for their future food supply. The days are getting shorter and so are the bees' "workday". Soon the temperature will decline, and so are their food sources.

As anticipated in the last few weeks, the Chanhassen apiary will not give us honey this year, due to the active swarming, resulting in two smaller but healthy colonies. These hives did not have the time to collect more for us. They were busy planing for themselves. Therefore we are getting the colonies ready to enter the cooler months. We are currently treating both hives with thyme to eliminate or decrease the Varroa mites population, and at the end of September as a prevention against Nosema ( a deadly bee microbe that affect the bee's nutrition and shorten their lifespan. A huge problem in Northern States) as a result we will give them some medicated heavy syrup. This time the syrup given will be 2:1, two times the amount of sugar per amount of water!...very syrupy indeed! This sugar water will help them in storing more food for the coming winter, and preventing a deadly fate . Usually two gallons per hive is sufficient.

The Shakopee apiary had its ups and downs. The Green Carniolan colony which lost 2 queens in a row, and got infected by mites soon after; had been challenging to keep alive the whole season. Its bee population is small, their store of honey is obviously small as well. I know that this type of honey bees go into the winter season as a smaller family than the Italian bees for instance, and thus need less food. However, I am very worried about their chance of survival. Nevertheless we will feed them with heavy syrup as well giving them all the chances they can get to pack food away for the meager days ahead. Obviously, this colony will not give us honey and has already been treated with thyme.

Our "champion" colony this year has to be the Purple Italian colony which decided to be very prolific in mid-June and there after. We saw an "explosion" pop corn-like of bees overflowing each of the 3 hive bodies; it was very impressive. The queen is a good egg- layer. She gave us good workers who labor hard all season. Therefore, the Italian honey bees have plenty of food for themselves and more! This extra honey which is located in the super (top smaller box) is for us to take! I have to mention that it is very rare indeed to get honey for our own consumption the first year of beekeeping. Usually during the first year, the bees are very busy building combs with wax ,taking care of the young and gathering food for the winter months. This exercise requires an enormous amount of energy and work from the little honey bees. We are very pleased with them to say the least.

Tomorrow (Wed. Sept.1st.) is the last "warm" day of the week predicted here, so we will pick up our honey supers...we think we will have 2, and we will extract the golden liquid from the frames, and bottle it this weekend.

Then I will give them some thyme medication for 4 weeks. After that period, the honey bees will also have a couple of gallons of heavy medicated syrup. This colony has the best chance to come through the winter and spring, it has all the quality of a good hive: heavy healthy bee population, lots of food and a prolific queen.