It's that time of year when, much to their relief, the bees are largely left to their own devices. It's a little nippy to be opening hives and pulling out frames and there'll probably be very little of no brood in there by now as night time temperatures are approaching zero.
They've had their Autumn feed of 2:1 syrup but success was varied. Hive1 seems to have taken about 2 gallons of syrup, Hive2 has taken about half a gallon. Both those colonies had Adam's Feeders that hold 2 gallons at a time.
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| Adam's Feeder of 2:1 syrup |
I only have two Adam's Feeders so Hive3 got a rapid feeder in an empty super. They took first 2 litres and another litre after I refilled it but then lost interest -or more likely it got too cold for them to take any more syrup.
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Rapid Feeder on Hive3
The blurry dark things are bees. |
This winter I plan to put a sugar board (or candy board if you prefer) on each hive to supplement their winter stores and see then through to spring. Apart from that I still have to do their oxalic acid treatment probably in early December then I'm done till Spring.
Had a look at the bees in Pearson Park Wildlife garden a few weeks ago too. At some point this year they'ed dropped from three hives to one so they've not been having a great year either but when I last checked they were back up to two.
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| National Hive and WBC hive in Pearson Park |
In the picture above which was taken in October you can see they've got the National hive with a super on, and the WBC hive too. The wooden structure to the right is the stand from the Top Bar Hive which evidently didn't make it. It may be that they uited the bees to make a stronger colony earlier in the season then split them again later -although comb from the top bar hive would've had to be either cut out and attached to new frames or just discarded.
