The honey flows have been reduced to just a dribble and the bees are beginning to make ready for winter. It is time to get your honey removed and the miticides on the bees. Bees that are reared now must be healthy and vigorous if your hives are to survive to build up for the honey to come next spring.

Years ago we could wait until September or even October to remove the honey crop. This was the rule that was changed with the advent of mites. We could wait until all of the honey was nicely capped and the brood had all hatched out of our supers and then remove the honey. These days are gone. If our bees are to be strong and healthy we must get our miticides on before the end of August to reduce the mite load on the bees that must take the hives through winter.

Removing honey now does take some extra effort. If the queen has been laying up in the supers you must separate the brood from the honey and put it back on the hive to let it hatch out. Place a queen excluder on top of the two brood chambers and the supers with the brood above the excluder. The bees will stop working above the excluder and start filling the upper brood chamber with honey while the brood hatches out of the super. Within a few weeks the super will be clean of brood and you should be able to get it off before the middle of August. Some of the honey in the super will not be capped. In our dry climate the honey will be of low enough moisture content that it will be quite satisfactory to add it to the other honey that has been fully ripened and capped.

Once the honey is all removed from the hive you should determine the mite load on the bees. This can be done most accurately using the screened bottom board. Simply put some paper with cooking oil spread on it below the screen board. Leave it for at least one day and then count the mites. Divide by the number of days to get your mite drop per day. Once you have the natural fall put another sheet of oiled paper below the screen board and apply your miticide. Check the mite drop again after a number of days. If there is not a huge increase i.e. from 10 mites/day to 300 mites/day then your miticide is not working. This is essential as some of the miticides are ineffective and will not reduce the mite load enough to make any difference. Your bees will be dead within 1 year and may die before next spring.

There are a number of new materials available for controlling the mites. There are several formulations of thymol which are effective. Apistan and Checkmite may or may not be effective. If you have installed package bees in the last few years it is likely that Checkmite will not be effective. Apistan may work. In any case check the effectiveness of the miticide do not assume it will work.

I recommend that you treat for tracheal mites and for nosema. Tracheal mites are easily treated using menthol by dissolving the menthol in hot cooking oil and soaking the solution in some of the blue mechanics rags. Simply purchase the menthol in the little bags and dissolve the menthol in one bag in 1/4 cup of cooking oil. Put the warm oil in a zip lock bag with two blue mechanics towels letting them absorb all of the solution. Put one towel on the top brood chamber and one between the two brood chambers. Make the lid tight and block the screen board if you have one on the hive. Wait until the hot days of August are over for this treatment. Usually the month of September is not too hot.  If the towels drive the bees completely out of the hive, take them off and store them in the zip locak bag and put them back on after if cools down a bit.

Nosema is present in most of our hives. Some of the hives will die during April and May from the virus. It is the biggest reason why bees that have made it through winter but will not build up in the spring and make a crop of honey. The cost of the medication is a maximum of $7 per hive for the smallest purchased quantity. The cost of the sugar feed is about $6 per hive. So for less than $13 / hive you can almost guarantee that they will not have the problem. You need to feed a 2:1 mixture of sugar and water (either by weight or volume) with the Fumagilin. Mix the Fumagilin in the warm water first then put the sugar in. You must heat (110 to 120F and stir the water to make the solution. Put this feed on mid to late September. They will not take the feed properly when the daily temperature is in the 50's. Do not wait much later than the beginning of October.

Now is critical for your bees if you want to make honey next year. Make certain that all of these medications are on in a timely way. If your queen has been through two honey flows she should be replaced. The best way to do this is to make up a nuc with brood and bees from the hive you want to replace the queen in. Take 4 frames: one of honey, one of brood and bees and two of bees and add a feeder. Take these to a new location and introduce a mated queen. Once the queen is laying and has sealed brood you can take the nuc and place it back into the colony you took it out of---once that you have found and killed the old queen.

Now is the time to get these fall preparations started: get your honey off, check for mites, decide on replacing the queen, put your miticides on, check their effectiveness, treat for nosema and then finish off with making sure they have plenty of winter stores. Do it now and you will have a winner of a hive next spring.