For most small beekeepers the season is over, hives have been prepared for winter and honey supers stored away. Apart from one cold snap, we have experience a very mild autumn of clear warm days. The bees have been flying and bringing in a little nectar. Queens are now producing their last brood cycle before winter and drones are being crowded down on to the baseboards ready to be ejected out of the hives. While the warm weather and nectar flow persists they are tolerated. A few hives have unsuccessfully tried to supercede and have become queenless, (they roar when opened up - i.e. the bees all fan and don't settle down). Late queens are still available from some breeders or you can unite the queenless hives with a good queen right colony (place the good colony on top of the queenless unit). Place two sheets of newspaper between and allow the bees to unite slowly. You should also do this with small or weak hives as stronger hives have a better chance of surviving the winter. In the spring when queens are available, the hives can be split and you are back to numbers again.

Now is a good time to reflect on the last season and plan for the next. Weather forecasters are predicting a similar winter to the last: warmer, wet with dry periods between (if that makes sense). This means that the bees could have periods where they will be able to go out and collect nectar from mid-winter sources on the bush and around the city areas. Consequently they could begin to build up earlier than normal, store early sources (such as rewarewa) and like a lot of hives this year, swarm early. How do you prevent this? Timely intervention.

Keep and eye on the level of stores in the hives and consider adding another super in September if your area experiences an early flow. Hives showing signs of swarming should be split. Order a few queens now so these hopefully will be on hand when your hives are showing signs of swarming. If they arrive a little earlier than planned, select your strongest hive, give it a good feed and then take a split of it a day later. This should help with queen acceptance.

Had a good year so I'll increase my hive numbers. Order new or replacement woodware now, so you can make them up during the winter. Its easy to increase hive numbers, swarms are collected, spits made are not used, someone going out of bees gives you a hive. However it's not always a good idea to have too many hives in a suburban area. Councils and neighbours are not as tolerant as they used to be and should they complain, you will be asked to remove the hives. It is a good idea to keep only two hives on a small section, (one you inspect every week to learn about bees, the other is left alone to produce the house hold honey), provided they are away from neighbours and their washing lines. One must remember that a good hive can have as many as 40,000 bees flying at the height of summer. This is an awful lot of bees.

Some find it best not to draw attention to their hives. Planting scrubs or growing runner beans close, or in front of the hives can provide a number of benefits. It forces the bees to fly high (above fence level - Most people don’t notice bees once they are above head height). As the hives grow in height, so do the beans, which tend to hide their presents.

Had enough supers. If you are not going to be continuously extracting during December/ January, it’s a good idea to have up to four honey supers per hive. Don't wait until one is full before putting the next one on, try supering two at a time.

Have trouble getting foundation frames drawn? Try inter-spacing foundation frames with drawn comb next season. Bees are sometime slow to go up into new supers, try lifting a frame of honey from the super below to encourage them.

Titchy bees? Some bees just don't like movement in the area surrounding the hive and will buzz and hit anything that moves, sometimes stinging. Ormond and Harry Aebi in their book Mastering the Art of Beekeeping have a very good idea to get around this. They put up a wave cloth fairly close to the hives. These consist of some old item of clothing on a pole that flaps around in the breeze. The bees investigate this and try to move it on. Having no luck they soon get used to it. This then allows you and your neighbours to move around freely without drawing any attention from your bees. If of course they persist, then the queen should be replaced. You can get some very nice tempered bees that are a pleasure to have around. Some are not even disturbed by the lawn mover. Too many hobbyists leave queens to replace themselves. Learning how to find and replace queens is at the heart of beekeeping.

For those who have their bees away from their property on a rural block, beekeeping practices are a little different. Look around and see what pollen plants are available to support your bees. This is a subject often overlooked by many. Farming practices have changed in the last few years. Every bit of land has to be brought into pasture, which means the odd patches of gorse, broom and blackberry have been sprayed or removed. If your hives are surrounded by pasture, have a talk to the farmer and see if he /she will set aside a small corner around the bees. Look at planting tree lucerne (in relatively frost-free areas), pussy willow or hawthorn (away from orchard areas). See what survives in your area and plant accordingly. These plants give early nectar and pollen, which is vital to kick-start the hives into sustained brood rearing. These plants have an additional advantage for the farmer in that animals in drought conditions can graze them.

Now is the time to collect seeds and take cuttings. Root them into a sand /soil mixture in your garden. Once established, they can be planted out in your apiaries in the spring. You should be able to see the results within a couple of years. Early drone production and even brood pattern without missed cells are an indication of sufficient pollen in hives; (early drone production can also be a sign of early preparations for swarming).

Wasps are now making their presents felt. In and around the hives, coming into the honey house and they do hurt when one goes down your neck. Nests are concentrating on queen production so now is the time to kill them. It's fairly easy to destroy a nest. Two tablespoons of an insect powder, flicked into the hole during the day or a coke bottle of diesel pushed into the hole after dark generally does the trick. In our area we now have mostly common wasps, (the ones with the wider black bands with the dots joining the bands). Over the years I have noticed that these wasps have gradually taken over from the German wasp. The advantage of these is that they don't seem to attack hives in numbers. Now we hardly loose a hive to these predators. However we still kill every nest we come across. Why not do your bit to help keep these pests in check. Go for a walk; look along drains, riverbanks and bush areas carrying a small bottle of insecticide powder. Ted Roberts used to pay children $2.00 for each wasps nests they found. It all helps to keep our environment in balance.

It's also been a great breeding year for rats and mice. Mice are making their presents felt having gained entry to hives with wide entrances and making nests in the top corners or in the top feeders. Rats tend to gnaw holes in the woodware in the spring when there is little food for them. I prefer to get rid of these before they can create a great deal of damage by putting out four Talon baits in plastic tubes under the hives. Generally you only have to replace these once or twice to clean up all the rodents.

This Month's Work: Winter down hives, dispose of honey crop, grade and sort combs into brood, extracting and damaged, fumigate for wax moth, check wasps, control growth around hives.