Last month, I mentioned an alternative way of removing honey using a bee escape. Vicky reported that it wasn't working which made me rethink. Basically the system only works if there is a flow on. Some commercial beekeepers do exactly the same thing in the middle of summer. Instead of blowing all the bees out of supers, they just stack them on the truck, drive a hundred meters away and wait half and hour and all the supers are clear of bees. But this doesn't work unless the bees are busy. If there isn't a flow on, the bees will not leave exposed supers and will defend their honey. So before trying the easy way of removing honey (honey super on a board with an escape on top), make sure the bees are working a flow. If they are defensive, its not going to work and you will just have to use the normal method of using bee escapes.

The season is quickly coming to a close. Already we are having heavy dews most mornings; a sure sign that winter is only just around the corner.

Autumn flowering sources are now evident. A dribble of a flow is coming in from Koromiko, Lance wood, Pink and Scarlet Eucalyptus and a few late flowering ground sources in wet areas such as Penny Royal and Lotus Major. This stimulates the bees into producing the last generation that will take the hive through the winter.

Most will have taken their honey crop off by now and we should be setting up our hives for winter and the coming spring.

I have looked into a couple of our members' hives recently and it's been interesting. There were lots on bees on the landing boards and some minor fighting, an indication that the robbing season isn't far away. I like to just leave a minimum of 100 mm by 10 mm. Reduced entrances are easier to defend and should be small enough to prevent a mouse entering the hive.

When the hives were opened it was easy to see that it's been a difficult year. Hives are not exceptionally strong but most had sufficient winter stores, however they were noticeably short of pollen. I estimate that these hives only had a couple of day's supply of pollen. Two hives had supersedure cells and although the queens were in the hives, they had stopped laying.

One hive was particularly weak. It was headed by an October swarm queen that had "half moon" disorder. This is caused through poor nutrition when the queen was developing and when first emerged, so the queen's ovaries did not develop fully. Symptoms look similar to EFB in that the hive has a patchy brood pattern with quite a number of dead larvae curled towards the front of the cells in a crescent, hence the name half moon. The only difference between this an EFB is that the larvae weren't yellow and you can usually spot multiple eggs in the cells. If you uncap some of the sealed brood you can often see drone larvae in the worker cells.

Any time you are going through a hive and spot something unusual that you are not sure about, take a sample of three larvae, seal them in a plastic bag and contact your local AgriQuality Advisory Officer. He will arrange for the sample to be tested and will notify you of the results. In this case, the queen was pinched out and the supersedure cells left to develop. Hopefully we'll have a nice stable autumn for the queens to mate and the bees to gather sufficient pollen to over winter. If not the hives might have to be assisted with a pollen supplement in the early spring.

Another beekeeper has had a particularly bad time with his hive after it swarmed and has now developed laying workers. No matter how many queens are introduced into the hive, they are killed. I made the mistake of not shaking all the bees out of the hive (some distance away from the hive) before introducing a nuc on top using the newspaper method. Unfortunately that queen went the same way as the others. Now it's best to remove most of the honey and start again with another nuc or swarm. Once the new hive is established, the bees from the old hive can be shaken on to the ground 30 meters away and the field bees will return and unite with the nuc.

The requirements for wintering down are a young queen, adequate stores of pollen and honey, light coloured brood frames and sound woodware.

Start with the baseboard. Check that the foundation is secure and it's off the ground by about 100 mm. It should have a slight slope forward to allow the rain to run off.

Reassemble the hive and removed old, dark heavy brood frames, frames with broken lugs, or those with patches of drone cells and replace them with fully drawn, capped honey frames produced this year. If the old frames can not be removed because they contain brood or pollen, move these to the outside of the super for later removal.

Scientific research has indicated that bees prefer newly drawn wax to old brood comb, which is logical in a way. It harbours less disease spores such as Chalkbrood, Nosema and perhaps even the odd spore of AFB. All hives contain reservoirs of spores in the brood comb hence it makes sense to remove these out of the system on a regular basis. A three-year turn over of all frames in the brood nest is recommended in most books. This system is practiced by quite a few large beekeeping operations and their disease levels are negligible - one or two hives per thousand hives.

The most important aspect to check is the viability of the queen. She should be young and vigorous. No need to find her, you can tell by looking at the brood pattern whether she is any good or not. Select an area of uncapped brood and look at the larvae. Are they all the same age, with very few missed cells. If not, consider replacing her now or at least consider over-wintering a nucleus as a spring replacement because queens are quite hard to obtain in the early spring. As a rule, more that 15 missed cells in 100 (75mm X 75mm) means a 15% reduction in honey crop.

A lot of my queens superseded this autumn. How can you tell? The only method is to mark the queen. I use water based poster paint pens but others use water based correcting fluid. Some fluids give off a toxic vapour and queens have to be held and blown on so they do not suffocate. Learn to catch and release drones by applying the minimum amount of pressure. Queens are delicate so you have to be careful. One method is to catch her by the wings, her legs are held between the thumb and forefinger of the other hand. A spot is applied to her thorax, allow it to dry for a minute, and then placing her back on the frame she came from. Queen catchers are available commercially, which gently pins her to the comb surface allowing her to be marked. Too much paint on the head or body could see her being replaced by the bees.

A lot of commercial beekeepers don't bother marking queens, they have a policy of replacing all queens each autumn plus carry a few nucs through the winter to make up for weak or queenless colonies in the spring. You don't need extra equipment to do this. Last year I carried a number of nucs through the winter in cardboard boxes. By spring they had eaten through the bottom but were a cheap alternative when gear is short.

Things to do this month: BL check before removing any honey. Extract honey, requeen, winter down hives and remove old combs

Don't forget to get your honey competition samples ready for next month!