Getting into the Winter Mode

The queen has started slowing down on laying eggs.The workers are storing honey in cells where no eggs have been laid to prepare for food during the winter. In the next week or so I will take the honey supers where excess honey was stored,that I extract and bottle the honey. After the supers are taken off,then their will be only the brood box where the queen was laying eggs and young bees were being born.I will start feeding them sugar water to help them eat it instead of all their honey supplies for winter.I will feed them sugar candy or such when it starts getting real cold,to help them survive winter

Planted 6 aster plants, which is a drop in the hat for the bees to pollinate. Each bee can visit 500 plants in a day. I would need acres of asters for them to get the pollen and nectar that they need. I live by a college that does research on crops, which ones do better in drought, wet weather etc. I just noticed that they planted half acre of late sunflowers, I'm sure when they head out or bloom,my bees will find them, only about a quarter mile away, which bees can fly up to 5 miles to look for food, but the more they fly the more their wings wear out, so better to keep the flowers and crops close.

I have been reading alot of articles in newspapers about the lower population of bees. Most of the experts say its pesticides,and herbicides that is causing the bees to die. I have talked to several companies that spray crop fields and they dont think the spray is hurting the bees. If it does not kill the bee the worker takes the poison back to the hive and has it fed to the the young bees in the colony which could cause deformed wings and such. The bees do have alot of other things that hurt them,pests like mites,hive beetles and just being eaten by birds and other insects. I read a story in a newspaper where the Lumber company Lowes was taking all the sprays off their shelf that would harm bees. This a start to help the bees survive.

In a month or so the bees will start storing more honey in the brood chamber where the bees will spend the winter months in.Depending on what part of the U.S. the hive is in, you want to leave at least 70 lbs of honey for the bees to eat during the winter months.

Bees are very important to the world food sources. They pollinate crops,vegetables,fruits,farm crops. I have one of my hives on a field of watermelon and cantaloupe that a farmer sells at grocery stores. A watermelon plant needs to be pollinated eight times in order to make a watermelon,so bees and other insects are very important to pollinate.

I will post different things I have learned in beekeeping since October of 2014, when I joined a local bee club. For the first few months when I first got the bees I mixed up sugar water and put it in a feeder that dripped a small amount of sugar water inside the hive. I had two hives and they would drink a quart of sugar water a day. Giving them the sugar water helped them get established as a colony until the flowers started blooming to give them pollen and nectar.

For several years,I had been wanting to take up the hobby of bee keeping. I had talked to several people that sold honey at farmers markets and they didnt seem to want to talk to me, maybe competition. I finally did talk to a guy that was selling honey at our local farmers market. He thought I should come to a local beekeeping club and see what is involved in beekeeping. I was given a mentor that would help me get started into beekeeping.In April I ordered two 3 lb boxes of package bees, which included a queen, that was in a small cage by herself so that the bees in the box could accept the smell that she put off. After a few days, myself and my mentor let the queen out with all the bees and they accepted her and she went to laying eggs after a few days.I enjoy very much just sitting in a chair and watch the bees bring pollen on their legs to the hive. I have learned alot and will learn more.