October 2nd today. Time is slipping away to finish our bee work. By now you should have treated for mites and fed the bees to get the hive heavy for winter.
In a perfect world, right now the top box on the hive should have eight full frames of honey and one partially filled frame located about in the center of the top box. The box below the top box should have four full frames of honey. If your hive has this much honey, that should be ample food stores for the winter.
If your hive does not have that much honey in the top box, but your lower box is heavy with honey, the honey needs to be put on top of the hive. Bees do not move down to get honey in winter. A hive can starve even though the bottom box is full of honey.
The weather will be perfect for feeding starting on Sunday. You can feed to top off the hive if the bees need it. Use a hive top feeder or several pails to get the feed in.
Three feeder pails can fit in a deep for feeding large quantities of syrup quickly.
Entrance reducers should be in right now at their biggest opening. Mice will start moving in with the cooler weather.
Nothing else to do at the moment. Looking ahead, Oxalic Acid treatments should be applied in late October when it is 40 degrees at the time of treatment. Oxalic Acid works best when the hive is broodless. Winter covers can go on anytime after Halloween.
