September 3rd 2023
It is now approaching fall in the world of the bees. It’s the time of the season to begin preparing for winter! This means topping off honey supplies, sealing cracks in the hive to keep out the cold, and fending off thieves. When the end of the season comes, some bugs (including other bees) find it easier to steal from other bugs instead of producing or finding their own food. The main enemy we saw today were the wasps!
Wasps don’t produce honey and generally only mated females survive the winter in the little hives you see around your homes. They need a lot less food but when the going gets tough the tough get going. They try to bully other bugs and steal their food. (This is why you see more hungry wasps hovering around your sugary soda near the end of summer)
As the flowers begin to die, more and more predators will come knocking on the bees’ door to steal their honey supplies. Our hive will probably have about 30,000 bees this winter. In the summer, at their peak, our hive probably had around 75,000 bees. We’ve been saying all summer that our ladies are spicy bees. Every time we open the hive they get irritated and buzz loudly at us. It’s not scary because we have our suits on and are using smoke to pacify them. But the wasps don’t have bee suits or smoke so they’re getting the full unadulterated spiciness of our girls. We saw a couple bees fight off a couple wasps. I saw a wasp get repelled from the main entrance by a bunch of bees. A wasp tried to sneak into the brood chamber and was pushed back by the bees. We’re confident the bees will not get robbed this fall and will have plenty of honey to get through the winter.
When we checked a couple of the upper frames we saw more capped cells and some of the frames we emptied were already being filled again! Earlier in the day when we stopped by after church, we saw a bunch of bees coming home with huge chunks of bright orange pollen on their legs. We don’t know where they’re getting it but it’s good to know they’re topping up at the end of the season. By the end of September we think they’ll have winterized their hive and will be ready for the cold months ahead. We will be feeding them some heavy 2:1 sugar syrup later this month to make sure they’re as prepared as possible for winter!
