We've been away for a week on holiday so it worked out nicely that we had to leave the hive unopened last weekend. Now that the chemical treatment is complete we have to really crack on and prepare for the winter. We have a full colony with (hopefully) virtually no Varroa mites, now we just have to make sure that they're stocked to the rafters with enough provisions to survive the winter.
As you can see here, their larder is completely bare. They've only just begun to build up the wax foundation in the super - in fact they're in virtually the same state they were in a month ago! By now these frames should be full of honey - there's no way this colony would survive even the mildest winter in this state.
The brood box shown above is a different story - masses of bees and plenty of honey to feed the hatching brood. There just isn't much in the way of provisions to keep the adult population alive for very long.
It was interesting to see the bees' reaction here when a wasp invaded to try to pinch some honey. They didn't sting it as I would have expected but four or five of them just bundled on top of it and wrestled it out of the hive. It came back less than a minute later but it got the message when it was booted out the next time - we didn't see it again.
Seeing as the only problem facing this colony now (so far as we can tell) is a shortage of food, we just need to feed them plenty of sugar syrup over the next few weeks and hope that they can convert it into honey to store for the winter. The autumn sugar syrup solution is much more concentrated than the spring syrup - I use 2kg of sugar to 1 litre of water (approx.)
