Its all on. October is the most important month in beekeeping. The bees are expanding at an alarming rate and those eggs laid in October, produce the bees that bring in the honey crop during December. If you neglect one aspect, swarming is triggered and if one gets away, there goes your honey crop.

What should you be doing?

DISEASE FREE --- Inspect you hives to see that they are disease free. Look at all frames during a warm afternoon for off-coloured or sunken cells amongst the emerging brood. Also look for capped cells in the bottom box, where no other brood cells are capped.

Scratch off the capping and have a look at the larvae underneath. Most will be chalk brood, but there are other problems such as sac brood that look similar to BL. BL ropes out on a match or dried up larvae stick to the bottom of the cell. Consult you books or the MAF Disease paper for identification. If you not sure consult another member or the MAF at Palmerston North.

Fill in the MAF Inspection Form, with the date of inspection, number of diseased hives found and the action taken. If your hives are away from a town or city address, put in the map reference. The Lands & Survey "NZMS 260" series maps can be purchased from book shops or the Scout Shop, or are usually available in libraries or local council offices. This is required to make the identification of the apiary easy in the event of an exotic disease outbreak.

YOUNG QUEEN --- You should have a young queen. I don't go by the age of the queen but by looking at the brood patten. Patchy brood amongst the emerging bees indicates an old queen or some other problem such as chalk brood. If you have a spotty brood patten through most of the brood nest, order a new queen. If the brood is wall to wall across the frames with very few missed cells, you have a young queen that will take you through the season. If in doubt, order a new queen and make up a nuc for her.

SPACE TO LAY --- The queen must have room to lay. She will move from the first, to the second and them into the third super laying eggs if you don't control her. The easiest way to give her room is to reverse the first and second brood chambers (supers) at the beginning of October. (I don't restrict the queens with an excluder).

SPACE TO EXPAND. Hives should now have two supers with brood in them and another one or two supers for honey above. As soon as the bees are half filling the super below, add another. They can quickly fill a super during the flow, in a week. Congestion is one of the causes of swarming. Bees hanging off the landing board and up the front of the super is an indication of congestion.

If you only have foundation frames, select two drawn frames from the outside of the super below, and place these in the middle of the new super to encourage the bees to come up and draw out the foundation.

CHECK EVERY 10 DAYS FOR QUEEN CELLS --- The bees build play queen cells around the outside frames just in case. Cut out or flatten all those on the top and edges of the frames, leaving those along the bottom bars. Its then very easy to do a quick check every 10 days by tilting the second brood super forward and looking along the bottom bars for queen cells. If there are eggs or grubs in them, you have to artificially swarm the hive.

The easiest way of doing this is to split the hive. Find the queen, and place her in the bottom super. Cut out all the cells in the bottom and third supers. Move the second brood chamber (along with a number of queen cells) to a new location, or use a split board and put this super on top of the existing hive. The Queens will emerge, mate and start another colony while the main hive continues to build again. After five days check the main colony again to see if they have replaced the queen cells. If they have add more brood and bees to the nuc.

On the 5 December, unite them back together again using two sheets of news paper.

If during you inspection, you come across a frame with a queen cell on it, don't cut it out immediately but wait until you have fully checked out the hive. Weak hives sometimes try to correct their own problems by superseding the queen. Check for eggs before you dispatch the Q cells. Better still to make a split or another nuc using the cell if your not sure.

This has been a very brief description to give you an idea of what to do. For a better explanation, consult you bee books.

What else should you be doing?

• Check food - don't let them go below three frames of honey.
• Requeen hives, (use a split board in the method explained above). Most hives are now bringing in the early bush and willow flows, so this shouldn't be a problem.
• Checked stored frames for wax moth.

• Cull out old frames from the brood nest. Move frames with large patches of drone cells or broken lugs gradually to the outside frames, then replace.
• Metalex dip, assemble and after they are dry (3 -6 weeks), paint new supers, floor boards and lids.
• Assemble and wire frames ready for waxing.
• Spray around the hives to keep the grass down.

Put a bait box on a shed roof to collect any swarms. They are often attracted to an existing apiary. If you collect any swarms - put them in old gear and check for disease a few weeks after collecting. Unite them to a weak colony in December (after killing the old queen if the patten is patchy) to produce a strong hive.

When all is done, take time to listen to the hum of the bees and the birds singing while sitting quietly relaxing beside your hives.