October 29, 2017 / Preparing for Winter

Even though our region of Texas has mild winters, Mark and I wanted to be certain our beehives were prepared for upcoming lower temperatures.  So, we spent the day inspecting our eight colonies and found them all in fairly good order.  They all had plenty of honey and the queens were active and healthy. (Click on photos to enlarge).

 

Hive 01 had a little more than two empty frames, but the remaining eight frames had a decent supply of honey for the bees to use through the winter months.  We saw our queen and noticed the hive was doing very well.  We picked up on a little fermentation odor as well as the presence of many small hive beetles (SHB).  We place Beetle Bee Gone sheets in the hive to help the bees fight off these annoying pests. 

SHB will eat everything inside the hive including the bees' pollen, brood, honey and comb, and will cause the honey to ferment in the process. The fermented honey gets "slimy" and can eventually run out of the comb, creating a mess within the hives. Weak colonies tend to be a target for SHB more so than strong colonies, but strong colonies can also become overwhelmed.

Hive 01 queen is near the center of the photo.

In hive 02, we did not notice SHBs and that was a good feeling.  Additionally, there was no fermentation odor.  The population of the bees in this hive was less than in hive 01, but we did see our queen and overall, the hive looked great.


Hive 03 has two deep hive boxes of bees and honey and just a little more than three empty frames for the bees to give space for the bees move around.  We did notice some odor, but we were happy with the progress of this hive.

 

Hive 03 bees working to produce a little more honey.

There are two deep hive boxes in hive 04 and in hive 05.  Both of these colonies appeared to be in a similar condition as hive 03.  During the inspection of hive 04, we were a little messy and dribbled some honey from one of the frames.  I had to give it a taste; it had a very “strong” flavor, even though it was a light color.  It seemed almost “piney” and reminded me of Christmas!  It really got me excited to harvest honey and I can hardly wait until we do.

The bees are helping to clean up our honey mess!

Hives 06, 07 and 08 also had an odor and a lot of SHBs.  Each colony had a nice supply of capped honey and was primed for the winter season.

SHB are seen here; they are the tiny black dots in the photo.

Although we are a little nervous about seeing so many SHBs, we are confident that they are not at a level for us to be worried...not yet anyway.  Cold winter temperatures will help to kill off a good deal of the pests, and we are counting on that. 


Our last task before heading back home was to check in on the "wild" bees that had made their home in a dry well inside a cattle water system on the property.  Mark and I have watched these bees and have been impressed with how they managed life without the assistance of beekeepers.  Unfortunately, the bees were no longer there and their home was in sad shape. We were pretty sure that the weather from Hurricane Harvey did them in.  Hopefully, they were able to swarm and find a safer home during the storm.