Winter prep.

Thanks to the YBeek's mum and the EYBeek who came along to toddler-sit while the YBeek and Patrick and I prepped our two hives for winter.

Here's our task list for Saturday, 23 October:

Take along: SMOKER; HIVE TOOLS; RUBBER HAMMER; wire brush; duct tape; syringe; medication.

1. Lift off both brood boxes from a hive, and as you do this, remove strips and put these in a safe place for toxic disposal; assess weight of supers. You must remove four anti-varroa strips from each hive, two from each brood super. Count ‘em!

2. Remove screen bottom board, and clean bottom board (wire brush). Reverse position of bottom board, so opening is at front, closed behind.

3. Replace bottom brood box, making an assessment of its weight; if it is entirely empty, no brood, no bees, no honey, this can be removed, but advice is just to put it back in that instance; see what progress in the new frames; if none, then replace with old raised-comb frames.

4. With syringe, dribble evenly between the frames 25 ml of 8.75 grams of oxalic acid crystals mixed with 250 ml of 1:1 by weight water and granulated sugar i.e. your feeding syrup.

5. Place the second box on top of the first, having estimated its weight, i.e. "heavy" or "light" or "in between" and look at new frames, replace with raised comb frames if they haven’t worked on this; one hive will get back the full frame of honey.

6. Dribble as in (4) above;

7. Place above that the inner cover, with the 3" wide slot taken from the rim placed directly over the top edge of the top super at the front;

8. Close off the oval opening in the middle of the inner cover with bee escape sealed with tape; place the entrance reducer at the entrance of the hive, reduced, to medium size.

IN ANOTHER COUPLE OF WEEKS WE WILL:

9. Place above the inner cover a piece of insulation board, 1", cut to fit;

10. place the hive lining over the hive, so that the bottom rests on the hive base, and

11. place the front entrance so that the smallest hole is useable by the bees, this should allow ready egress and entrance if all goes well with the liner;

11. place the hive top above the insulation board and

12. put the cover on top and place several bricks on the cover.

Everything went pretty smoothly. Observation: we gave each hive six new plastic brood-super frames when we took off honey, attempting to remove some old frames with gunk-filled comb. This is not an experiment which bears repeating. In future, give new brood-super frames in spring. We left each hive with a couple of new frames in which they'd raised comb, and returned frames we'd taken off.