September in the bee year
The colony settles onto the ring of stores. Anyone who checks the weight now, fits mouse guards and keeps quiet closes the active season cleanly.
- Colony strength
- c. 22,000
- Brood
- falling
- Forage
- Ivy, aster
In September the colony contracts. The cluster is not yet tight, but the occupied area shrinks. Honey and feed are moved inwards, outer combs empty. Anyone who still leaves large, empty boxes under the colony at this point gives the bees cold and the mice a home.
Ivy, aster and stonecrop can still yield nectar and pollen — in some years a real late flow, in others only flying weather with no crop. Wintering follows feed weight, colony strength and mite count, not the calendar page.
Wintering down is order, not another harvest.
In the colony
The queen is still laying, but on a smaller area. That helps keep varroa down if the summer treatment worked — and it endangers the winter bees if it did not. A broodless window often only arrives in November or December.
Robbing is typical of September: strong colonies hunt weak ones. Tight entrances, no open feed, do not feed nuclei next to production colonies. A robbed young colony is empty in a night.
Beekeeping work
Check stores: heft, estimate, feed once more if needed. Fit mouse guards before the nights turn cold and rodents move in. Match the number of boxes to the colony — a half-strength colony in three boxes overwinters worse than on a tight nest.
Make hive and comb winter-fit: leaking roofs, gaping floors, shaky stands. Woodpecker protection in woodland. No more needless inspections; every opening tears up the order that is forming.
Forage and pollen
Ivy is the last reliable mass forage of many towns and village edges. The honey can candy in the comb already. Aster, stonecrop, late perennial borders in gardens. Anyone who cuts ivy cuts the last protein away from the winter bees.
At the apiary
- Check and record feed weight
- Fit mouse guards
- Reduce hives to winter size
- Reduce entrances; prevent robbing
- Check young colonies extra carefully
Forage this month
Ivy · Aster · Stonecrop
