As always, the BONS November meeting was fun, well attended, covered a lot of items and had an interesting program. Several members, talented as both beekeepers and  woodworkers, showed the equipment they have built or modified to perform better with how they keep bees.  This is the heart and soul of beekeeping, making what you have work for your bees.

So where does one start? I find manufacturing some of my hive equipment allows me to modify what I don’t like into what I do like. For example, I didn’t like the screen bottom boards that I had bough from several different sources so I started building my own. I needed to ventilate my hives more while keeping out other insects so I built my own vent shim.

I don’t deviate from the  length, width or height of standard medium supers. I usually purchase supers during the free shipment events of major bee equipment supply companies. I find these supers to be well designed and very serviceable. I also purchase frames and foundation in bulk.

Other than supers and frames, I build to my needs. One excellent source of plans is the Michigan Beekeepers Association’s In the Beekeeper’s workshop. Mr Tilmann has done an excellent job with his free downloadable plans and videos. Even if you never build your own equipment, it is a great place to learn.

What an enjoyable way to make those cold “bee less” Winter months fly by!

Fall is well established in the bee yard. Frost and colder nights has ended the flowers and feeding opportunities for the year. My hives are on the course that they will take and little can be done between now and early Spring. I’ve been a little slow in removing the last of the feeders so the weekend has that chore scheduled. Weather forecast is for low 60s around noon. Could I get one quick peek into the hive?

I’ve gotten a few questions on Winter insulating and wind breaks neither of which I use for my hives. I leave the screen bottom boards fully open and have a home made vent shim under the top cover. This vent shim has a one inch screened opening that allows for a bit of air flow up and out of the hives. I use it year around.

The Golden Rod is in it’s full  bloom yellow glory and the bees are bringing it in by the leg loads. There are also other Fall plants in various stages of bloom so a steady stream of  full pollen baskets are flowing into the hives. It is a wonder to just watch bees at work!

Inspecting the hives today was very satisfying as there is solid brood and ample stores in the full size hives. They are well underway to successful overwintering.

All but two of my nucs are doing well for my nuc overwinter plan. One that is not doing well is from a late swarm I caught, so I shall see how it ends. I used overwinter nucs to make comb honey this past Spring. I hope to do a bit more comb production in 2014. Chunk comb was very popular and turned out better than expected.

I reduced the hive openings down to about one half of the width using a 3/4″ x 3/4″ x 6″ wooden reducers. I don’t use the standard entrance reducer that comes with hive kits because the 3/8″ opening is too small for easy removal of the dead bees. This 3/8″ opening (think bee space) can clog up in late winter creating a bit of a problem for the bees.

I also installed mouse guards which for me is a piece of 1/2″ hardware cloth stapled across the opening. Some suggest using 3/8″ but that is too small for my liking (think bee space again).

Some of my hives are still 5 medium supers tall. I decided to reduce them down to four mediums by removing the bottom most super, assuming it would be empty comb. I like to overwinter in three or four mediums with 50 or 60 pounds of capped honey. This equates to the top two supers full of capped honey. If the outside frames are light I don’t get concerned.

I pulled the four upper supers from the first hive and removed frames from the bottom most super (the one resting on the bottom board)  to check that they were empty comb. I was a bit surprised to see pollen stored in these frames. As it was not very much and I use the frames with next spring’s nucs I thought that I would continue my four super plan. I moved to the next five super hive where to my surprise, I found same situation – a few frames of pollen in the bottom super.  I continued to the next hive and found even more stored pollen in the bottom super. Three out three with the same status set off my “what is going on?” beekeeper thinking. I moved to the stack of supers and pulled an outside frame from what was the second super expecting to find  a bit of honey but instead found capped brood in  a very solid pattern. So much for what I thought! The bees were doing just the right thing – keeping pollen next to the brood area and I was disturbing the nest plan. I put it all back and decided that overwintering 5 mediums would be better that damaging what looks like very good hives.

Did I simply over super? Will the bees move the pollen, brood nest and honey up as the Fall progresses? More education from these amazing creatures!

As always the bees do what they want to do with me somewhat in their way and mostly just an observer in the process. I’m going to leave the remaining five super hives as they are and see what next Spring has to teach me about beekeeping.

Yesterday marked the completion of my Fall mite treatment.

The queens are back on task as very young larva and eggs were seem in the nest area. It has been raining more than normal for August, so much so that I had to string trim around the hives.

Nature is following her usual August plan so not much is blooming although some hives were bringing in pollen. I was a bit surprised to find honey stores low. As I can’t count on a Fall honey flow, I’ll be off to the sugar shack! Light feeding is not a bad thing as it tends to keep the queens laying and the hive strong with plenty of young fat workers.

I’ll be finished with mite treatment by next week then on to preparing for Fall. For me, this process is to balance the honey supplies between all the hives that should over winter and combine those hives that are weak. I also feed to keep the queens productive. Young fat bees for the winter!

Adding to the fun of beekeeping, the small swarm I captured about three weeks ago some 5 miles from my hives (so not my bees) is doing well. It has a good queen that has produced several frames of both eggs and  brood.The swarm is in  five frame, medium nuc boxes two high. I added  frames of capped honey and some pollen to the top box and frames of uncapped honey to the bottom box. The swarm landed in a bee gold mine, everything they needed to get started.

I need to decide if I want to attempt to over winter it as a nuc or combine it into a queen-less hive. I’m leaning towards the over winter as a nuc decision which I’ll make in the next two weeks based on the hive’s strength.