WEATHER CONDITIONS

• at least 60 °F, little wind

GENERAL MANAGEMENT

• This is the time to conduct a thorough inspection before the start of the fall flow. What you do here will determine the success or failure of your colonies for the next eight months.
• Estimate colony strength:
  • Combine disease-free, weak colonies with stronger ones.
  • Note! Exchange or combine equipment from different hives ONLY after establishing that they are free of disease.
• Evaluate queen:
  • Make sure the queen is present. If you do not find her, be sure that you see eggs.
  • Check several brood combs for brood quality, which is an indicator of queen quality. A good queen will lay a solid brood pattern with few skips. The fewer the skips, the better the queen. All of the combs need not be good, but most of them should have solid patterns
  • Requeen as needed. Check for acceptance in 7 days. Consider routine fall requeening.
• Check to see if the colony is honey bound. Raise problem combs and other full combs of honey out of the brood nest and into a honey super. Never raise eggs or young larvae above the excluder as the bees may rear a queen.
• Move any light colored combs of honey in the upper story to the outside of the hive body. These are combs that have not yet been used for brood rearing. They may split a cluster as it rises during the winter if they are in the middle of the upper food chamber. This will impair the colonies ability to thermoregulate. In addition, one of the clusters will be queenless.
• Be sure to add sufficient supers for the fall flow. You should have the equivalent of two deep supers of empty combs on the colony at the start of the fall flow. If the fall flow is strong, be ready to add additional supers. Bottom super when adding supers to colonies that already have capped honey in the upper supers.
• The goal is to have the bees fill the supers and much of the upper brood chamber during the fall flow, forcing the queen down into the bottom brood chamber. If you do not have enough room, the bees will fill the upper AND lower brood chambers with honey and deprive the colony of space for brood rearing. If this happens, instead of having lots of young bees for the winter, you will have lots of older bees, and the colony will not successfully winter. Always err on the side of too much room, rather than too little.
• Winter preparation tip.

IPM for HONEY BEE PESTS, PARASITES, PATHOGENS and PREDATORS

PESTS: Wax Moths and Small Hive Beetles

• Keep all of your unused combs in mothproof stacks or in a mothproof room or building. Tape cracks between supers or repair supers so they fit tightly together. Inspect regularly! Treat with Para-moth® or Fumigator® at first sign of wax moth.
• The best solution for wax moths is to keep as many supers of combs as possible on your colonies. Strong colonies provide the best protection for your combs.
• To minimize damage from Small Hive Beetles:
  • Extract honey within one week of removing supers from the hive and return supers to hives immediately after extracting.
  • Keep your honey house and equipment scrupulously clean.

PARASITES: Parasitic Mites and Nosema

• Exchange drone comb traps.
• Freeze drone combs you removed.
• Check mite levels:
  • Mite levels often being to soar at this time of the year. If left untreated, your colony will be severely damaged and will likely perish during the fall flow or shortly thereafter.
  • Perform ether roll using 300 bees from brood nest. If ether roll counts are > 3, remove honey crop and treat with Apistan or CheckMite+.
  • If you find signs of Parasitic Mite Syndrome, remove all honey supers and treat with Apistan or CheckMite+.
  • At the end of the fall flow, you can remove the surplus honey AND the winter stores from untreated colonies, and replace their winter stores with surplus honey from colonies that required treatment in late August. That way you can still harvest the same amount of honey.
  • If you have been using the drone comb removal method, you can probably skip the ether roll at this time because the mite levels will be very low.

PATHOGENS: AFB and Other Diseases

• Examine ALL combs in brood nest for disease.
• Abate AFB colonies immediately.
• If you are unsure about a diagnosis, send a sample to the Bee Research Laboratory for analysis.
• DO NOT treat with TM at this time.

PREDATORS: Bears and Skunks

• Maintain bear fences. Check voltage and trim grass.
• Check for skunk damage and install skunk guards if needed.