The summer has passed and fall has started. We are seeing hot days and cold nights which is the beginning of the cold season. Our lakes and streams have already dropped in temperature and the ground temperature is also dropping. The bees have sensed this sometime earlier in August and have begun preparations for the winter. Any nectar that comes in now should be going into the brood chamber. If you still have your supers on it will be going into empty spaces there rather than the brood chamber. So get your honey removed and extracted.

The bees need to have about a full deep of honey to get them through the winter and early build up of spring. It is best to feed now rather than in the spring. Spring feeding can be problematic due to temperature extremes that prevent the bees from getting to the feed. Our fall days usually have temperatures in the 70's and 80's all the way into late October and make the best time to feed the bees up to one full deep of honey. It is best to give the feed to the bees with plenty of time for them to take the feed and cap it. Most strong hives will devour a gallon of feed in a day or so if the temperatures are high enough--above 50F. Once the daily temperature maximums are in the 50's it is getting too late to put any feed on the hives.

If your hives are weak (less than 9 full frames of bees) they may benefit from feeding a stimulating sugar syrup mixture. They may be weak because of disease or a poor queen. Assuming that you have a good young queen and no disease but perhaps the nectar and pollen have been in short supply feeding a 1:1 sugar syrup mixture will benefit the colony. It is best to feed a little at a time and add some each day rather than feeding it all a once. Just add 2 quarts in your feeder each morning for a couple of weeks and the hive will raise a few frames of brood that will help make it though the winter and be strong in the spring. Start early September and complete the stimulative feeding within 2 weeks.

Once the stimulative feeding is complete then a final 2 gallons of heavy syrup with Fumigilin-B is fed to provide for both winter stores and protection against nosema. Nosema is an adult bee disease that robs the bees of vigor causing the colony to be weak and slow to respond to spring food sources. Often the colony will show severe signs of dysentery during confined winter periods defecating inside the hive and then slowly dying during the spring build up period. Feeding the medication in the fall will reduce the disease incidence to almost nothing. The medication must be fed in heavy syrup at the last of the feeding to insure that it is stored and used during the winter and early spring.

All of this feeding must be done before our day time temperatures get to the 50's or your feed will not be taken and will rot within the feeder making a mess for you to clean up. At the same time if you have not begun your mite meds better get them on. The menthol should wait until maximum daytime temperatures get below the 90's as the high temperatures will often run the bees out of the hives. I prefer putting the menthol on using the mechanic towel with cooking oil rather than the menthol crystals in the bags. The formula is widely used and can be found on the internet.

There are a number of options for varroa mite treatments. What ever treatment you use you must check its efficacy. That is, before you put the treatment on, check the daily mite drop that you are having. Then apply the treatment and check the daily mite drop during and after the treatment period. The purpose is to make certain that the treatment is working. If you just apply the treatment and assume it works you may discover in a few months or next year that the treatment was ineffective and your bees have passed the living treatment threshold and will die. The new treatment Apiguard is a thymol type treatment that the mites should not become resistant to and the material may not cause many of the problems that other hard chemicals we have used have. Note that varroa mites have shown resistance to both Apistan and Checkmite and both of these treatment materials have affected the vigor of the colony.

So it is time to get your bees fed and ready for winter. Get the feed on now with the Fumigilin-B as the cost is small compared to a package and all of its problems in the spring. Make certain the queen is a good one. Replace her if she is not by introducing her to one box while saving the other queen in the other box until the new queen is laying good. Get your mite treatments on. All must be done in a timely manner if you are to have a strong booming hive in the spring. Good luck!