First Frost and Fall Hive Inspection

Well the Indian summer is over and we had our first frost last night. Here is how the Squash plants looked today:



Now begins the preparations for winter. I inspected both beehives and found that they were in good shape and had stored plenty of honey away for the winter season.

This is an example of how the top 10 frames from hive #1 are looking. This is all capped honey and is quite heavy. This will sustain the bees through the winter.


The frame above is from hive #2 and shows an area in the center that was previously occupied by brood and has been recently been refilled with capped honey for winter. This hive has more than a dozen frames like this in good shape.

This will be the first fall that we have decided not to feed our bees any sugar water. We have left them to gather their own honey to store for winter which must be much healthier for them anyway. If they run out, we have some reserves of their honey from previous harvest we can feed back to them.