Koromiko, Lancewood, Eucalyptus and Pennyroyal are now flowering. The days are getting shorter and there's dew on the ground in the morning. These are all indicators that summer is drawing to a close. Time to prepare the hives for winter. What you do now sets the hives up for the next season. Hives should be requeened, frames with broken lugs moved to the outside or replaced altogether with frames of honey drawn out this year. Honey stores should be checked, the surplus removed and extracted but make sure there is ample left for the bees to winter over on.

I personally leave a full depth super of honey on my hives and winter them three high. That way I can produce queens in the spring instead of going around the hives each week, feeding them. I visit my hives in September to see that they are all standing upright and doing well. During this visit I expect to find the odd hive that has consumed all it's stores. It will be full of bees and unless assisted through supplementary feeding, will not make it to the flow. I like my hives to have a big population early to take advantage of the Kamahi flow in October/November but control the populations of the larger hives (those that develop drones early) by making nucs (splits) to mate new queens in. In fact, most of the hives are split to raise new queens.

Other commercial beekeepers reduce their hives down to one or two supers high leaving only 6 frames of honey. This is enough to get them through to September but there after, they are feed sugar syrup to stimulate the hive to increase population so that they reach a peak in December when their main honey flow occurs. Intense feeding like this controls the hive's growth and prevents swarming and is cheaper in the long run. However, it does take a toll on the bees, as it requires a lot of work to invert the sugar into honey. It depends upon your circumstances, when your flows occur and the resources (labour units) available to you.

With this in mind, prepare your hive/s for winter. Remove the surplus honey and extract it. Half capped frames can be removed provided that the honey doesn't come out when the frames are given a quick shake. Specks or debris in some cells indicates it have been there a while, has been ripened and is safe to remove.

Those who winter in two supers and find the second super is not totally full with honey, but the hive/s have half frames of honey in the supers above, you have three options.

1. Place the half frames of honey in the bottom super where the bees will utilise them.
2. Place an escape board, with the escape removed between second and third supers. As soon as the nights get cold, the bees will bring this surplus honey down around the brood nest.
3. Extract the half frames of honey and feed back thick sugar syrup to the bees until there is the equivalent of one full super of stores.

Method 2 can be used to clean up "wets" (supers following extraction with honey residue still in them) so they are completely dry ready for storage.

Remember that a few hives (2 to 10%) will die out during the winter through natural causes, loss of queen etc., so why not carry a few nucs through the winter as spares. If they are not needed in the spring, they can either be united with another hive to make a two-queen unit or sold to a new beekeeper.

Five or six frame nucs can be over-wintered easily on top of a strong hive by using a split board. Place the entrance to the side or rear of the main hive but don't forget to provide the main hive with a little upper ventilation by placing a matchstick on two corners just under the split board. The heat from the hive below keeps the nuc warm and therefore less honey is consumed. (Add more honey frames or feed sugar syrup in the spring and it will build to a full size hive).

While you are inspecting the brood for disease, check the hive's foundations and replace if necessary. Slope the hive forward slightly so the rain does not pool inside. Replace any rotting woodware. Close down entrances to prevent wasp attack. These little horrors fly at lower temperatures than bees and will happily sneak in and pinch the honey and brood to feed their developing queens. They will probe each hive's defences until they find a weak one, then press home an attack. Once they get the smell of the hive, the guard bees will not challenge them and they will strip out the hive in a week and then move on to the next weakest hive.

There is a poison available you can put out if you can't find their nest but this is expensive. An alternative is to pay the neighbourhood children a few dollars for each nest they find. They are usually in banks and along waterways and at this time of the year are reaching peak populations so are easy to find. It’s a simple matter to dispatch them. A couple of tablespoons of insecticide powder down the entrance should kill them all in an hour.

In some areas, rats can be very destructive during winter. Last year 6 of my supers required remedial attention for rat holes. Their numbers had built up around some of my bush apiaries during the last two warm winters. When they are hungry, they will enlarge any cracks; knotholes in supers or the hive entrance to gain access to the precious food supply inside. Some beekeepers nail a piece of tin across the front of the bottom-board, which creates a tunnel for the bees and prevents the rats from enlarging the entrance. I put 6 Talon tablets into a plastic bottle, enlarge the top so they can gain access, and place these under a hive in each apiary. The bottle prevents other animals such as hedgehogs from getting at the poison, although we are now finding that these introduced animals are just as destructive against the native insects and birds as rats are. Don't put out too much at one time, as rats tend to store food and not use it immediately. Repeat in a couple of months just to make sure all have been killed.

Cappings should also get processed and rendered into wax blocks ready for swapping into foundation. The honey should be separated from the cappings. There are many methods: it can be pressed, spun out, melted out, using a hot top, put on a hive for the bees to remove, it can be washed and the water used in preparation for making mead or just put in a solar melter.

When melting the wax, pay particular attention to the heat being applied. Beeswax melts at 64 Deg C, so don't over heat it and process it only once if you can. The hot wax can be strained through sacking or similar to remove large cell particles. Small particles will settle on the bottom of the mould and can be cleaned off when it is cool. It can be removed with a hand plain, chiselled off or melted off with a gas torch, leaving a nice clean block ready for resale. The dirty wax can be reprocessed when all the clean wax is finished.

Don't waste burr comb scrapings when you are cleaning up your hives. Always carry a container or a plastic bag and collect it. It's surprising just how much of this you collect during the year.

Storage of honey supers is most important. To get a super drawn from foundation required approximately 7 kg of honey and required a lot of work by your bees. This represents quite an investment so look after them.

There are several methods for storing supers depending upon size of operation and location.

For those in a frosty environment, supers can be stored in open shed on a raised frame. Place netting or queen-excluders on the bottom and the top of each stack to prevent mice or rats nesting in them. This allows cold air to flow through the supers, which prevents the wax-moth larvae from developing.

If they are to be stored in an enclosed environment, such as a shed, then it is best to seal them with newspaper top and bottom (plus any cracks) and use a chemical to kill wax moth larvae. Place a tablespoon of PDB crystals on a piece of newspaper on the top super's frames and cover. The crystals convert to a gas, which is heavier than air, so will displace the air thus killing the larvae. Repeat in a month or so, as PDB does not kill wax moth eggs.

If you don't think wax moth are a problem, then just store frames of honey and pollen in a hot room at 32 Deg C for a week. When you look at them again, there will be numerous larvae crawling on the dark frames.

It pays to take precaution rather than replace frame of chewed out wax. Don't use mothballs, as this is a different chemical and will leave a residue in the wax, which will continue to kill your bees when the supers are put on the hives.

When storing beekeeping gear it is also important to consider health issues. Supers, frames, gloves and bee suits all contain venom from crushed or stinging bees. This dries out and draughts can pick up the tiny particles, which can be breathed in by members of the household. Children going through puberty are especially susceptible as their bodies are changing and they can easily become allergic to bee stings. Wash bee suits and gloves after use. Store equipment well away from living areas. Put down protective sheeting if you use the family car to transport bee gear. I tend to harp on about this, as one of my sons is highly allergic to stings and had to take a course of injection to build up some immunity. Even now he only needs to put a bare arm on the driver's door window of my Ute and he will come up in a rash.

Enough writing, I'd better get back to the extracting.