9/29 hive check -

 The bees have slurped up all the sugar syrup from a week ago so I added more into the top hive feeder.  That should keep them happy during the upcoming rain and some colder nights ahead.  I will, however, need more sugar.

I wanted to look at the super and see if any of the frames had enough honey to harvest.  Nope!  But they seem to be all drawn out and loaded with bees at this point.  They are also vicious!  They were once again all over me but I didn't get stung miraculously.

Looks like there's some gopher activity out there.  After the rain, I am going to treat some areas with neem oil because I had a lot of mole and gophers eating up my lawn this year and they're still around. I have a lilac bush that has some white mold on stems and it's dying so I will treat that at the same time. I've been using milky spore but it isn't working good enough, if at all. I expect it does some good but I still have too many critters around looking for food.

Last night a racoon, for example, was on my front porch.  My camera caught it...this morning I see it has eaten some of the pumpkin...other ones have nibbles too and I've tried using cayenne pepper and it's helped but it didn't stop this coon!

I've moved the hives around a bit to give me room to maneuver.

Mean, mean bees today

It's been almost 3 weeks since I did my last hive check so I went in there this morning and have multiple stings, even through my PPE.  My intent was to go into each deep and see what's going on with capped brood and if there's a queen...and do a bit of cleanup of comb and scrape off propolis as needed.

However, as I was emptying the super of a few frames to make it lighter, assuming there was something in there, I was swarmed and stung multiple times and chased away.  But I went back to at least close things up, put on a top hive feeder in preparation and added the entrance reducer but with larger opening.  I figured I'd add the mouse guard tomorrow when it's raining and they will be less likely to swarm me.  I won't be trying that anytime soon although I should.  But I don't like the bees at this time of year when they get mean!

I moved one of the empty hives into a spot that I hope will help protect the (hopefully) one working hive from winds over the winter.  I will move the other empty hive, the one that's tipped in the image above, a bit away from the working hive so that I have better access to all sides of the hive.

My intent, if I could without taking anything away from the bees, was to take a few frames from the top deep...but I doubt I'll do that now unless I lose the hive. But until then, the honey will be for them.  I still have enough for at least another season but there will be no selling or gift giving until I have more.

I barely saw any mites on the bottom board. I did the oxalic acid/glycerin treatment earlier in the summer but because I was late doing it, I was late putting the supers on.  

Next year, I'll do the oxalic acid varroa mite treatment much sooner, in May, so supers can go on by mid June.