In the urban areas, everything seems to come into flower and the hives are packing the honey in. Unfortunately they can quickly become overcrowded and swarm at this time of the year.

So what to do. Look along the bottom bars of the top super every ten days for signs of queen cell growth, (ie buds are OK but when you see them elongate, investigate why). When the queen has laid an egg in a Q cell the hive will swarm if not handled correctly. Make a nuc with this cell and take three to four frames of emerging brood and a Q cell. Once the queen has emerged and laying (usually about 25 days from the time you first noticed the larvae in the cell) you can unite the nuc back on top of the main colony using two sheets of newspaper.

The idea for using newspaper is that the bees chew through this and gradually unite without fighting. The bees above know they have a queen and usually kill the old queen below. Sometimes they don't and you can have two queens laying in the brood nest, though infrequently the queens meet and kill each other. This method works about 80% of the time. If you don't like these figures, you can find the old queen and dispatch her before you introduce the nuc.

Feed: Don't let your stores go below three frames of honey as a strong hive will consume this amount in a week of inclement weather. Feed syrup to weak colonies and raw sugar to strong colonies to hold them back.

If you can't attend to your hives every ten days, super your hives to give the bees room. Its also a good idea to put a few swarm boxes on shed roofs close to the apiary to collect your own swarms if they issue. However there is no guarantee they will go in there but most will.

It can be hazardous climbing trees to retrieve swarms so don't take unnecessary risks. A rope over a tree and a sharp tug usually dislodges most bees. Add a frame of brood (shake all the bees off first) and another of honey to the swarms and they'll set up home nicely.

Make up new frames and wire them ready for waxing. If you wax frames too early it can become brittle and is easily broken, however we do all ours early and don't seem to have any problems.

As you are adding new supers to the hives, move a frame of honey from the super below, into the middle of the new super to encourage the bees up into the super. Failure to do this may result in overcrowding in the supers below which leads to swarming. Don't put a full super of wax foundation on either without baiting the bees into the super with a drawn frame.

Some around the city should now consider removing and extracting the first of your honey. I got a little shock the other day to find several hives had filled and capped the top super, then swarmed. Know your area and be prepared to give your hives more supers if they are required. Remember a strong hive can fill a super in a week on a good flow, so its often better to put an extra super on each hives before its actually required.

Things to Do for November:

Check feed, check pollen (shouldn't be a problem in our area)

BL check, raise queen cells and requeen hives, super hives, swarm control, cull old frames, fit foundation into comb honey frames and keep the grass down.