Well winter has finally arrived with last weekend’s fall of snow around the mountains. Hasn’t it been a lovely warm autumn?

It has been quite surprising to still see drones flying from some hives during the middle of the day. This is usually a sign of a queenless hive, but on investigation, the hives concerned have each been found to be very strong, have a new queens, about three frames with brood and wet honey around the brood nest. Seems there is something around stimulating the hives into continued brood rearing.

On my last visit to my bush hives, Crimson Rata was in full flower, totally out of season. I have also seen the odd flower on Manuka bushes, Pohutukawa, Wattles, Eucalyptus, as well as spring bulbs flowering. At the same time Tree Lucerne, our trusty spring source of early nectar and pollen is budding up. However now the cold weather is here, the bees flying activity should be curtailed and the bees will go into their winter cluster.

There is still a little maintenance you can do around the hives, weather permitting. Open up the vegetation so the hives get a much sun as possible. Keep the grass down and check for condensation under hive mats or lids. Just as a side issue, have you noticed just how quickly a dark painted hive heats up in the sun. When it comes to repainting hives, consider using pastel colours. Bees find it easier to orientate to their hives it the supers are all different colours. I scout around the paint shops to see if they have any miss-tints. Generally, this is a cheap way of acquiring good quality paint.

I still have a few small nucs around the house and will now put them into four frame full size boxes so they will have enough food for the winter. They are very small in bee numbers so I hope they will survive OK. Some of the others have been used to requeen hives found to be queenless. Queenless hives really roar at this time of the year if they are disturbed. If you find one and haven’t got a replacement queen, unite it with another using a sheet of newspaper and make a split in the spring to replace it.

If some of your hives feel a little light (ie the brood rearing has consumed a lot of their winter stores), put 2kg of raw sugar into the top feeder. Add a shake of water to the edge to encourage the bees to feed on the sugar and leave. The bees will soon get the idea that they have a convenient food supply close at hand and this will provide an emergency supply should they run out of stored honey. If they have plenty of stores, then they will leave it and the sugar will help provide a little insulation. As soon as the weather warms up in the spring, the bees will consume the sugar so it won’t be wasted.

If you store your honey super in a shed or garage, check the frames for wax moth and add a tablespoon of PDB to each stack if you see wax moth larvae. Normally the cold weather will kill of the moths in gear stored outside so no further treatments are necessary for these.

Over the next few months, we will be telling new beekeepers how to set up a hive. Bring any questions to the meeting.