Built insulated walls for winter

So on saturday october 17 I assembled some insulation to serve as winter protection, not sure how well it will work.

Redrilled the top hole on Hive A because they had blocked it with propolis/comb/honey.
Put the cork back in.

Sunday Oct 18: 68 degrees

Tuesday October 13, 2015 Decided to keep feeders on

Sunday, 2 days ago, it was 85 degrees, a new record! The syrup was nearly empty so I decided to fill them again and will pull the feeders when they stop taking down the syrup.

There are less bees in Hive A but I think it is normal for overwintering preparations. Hive B is looking stronger from a number of bees standpoint but not sure they'll have enough honey to make it through winter.

October 5, 2015 Still feeding Hive B

I checked the feeders and they were nearly empty so one more round of syrup went in to Hive b today.
I plan to remove the feeders next week, at least that's what I'm thinking as of today.

Twenty four hours later and the grass is gone

Thursday evening Sept 24, 2015: So I went to the hives with my flashlight of my iPhone at 7pm (yes it's getting darker earlier) and they had removed the grass from Hive A and there appeared to be mainly drones ~ a dozen lying about in the grass and on the landing board. They were alive but just hanging out - languid really.

Hive B had pulled most of the grass out.

Today, Saturday Sept 26, just checked them and Hive B will need more syrup this afternoon, I'll wait until it's warmer out.

Robbing?

So the more I thought about the video of the tall/strong hive, the more I thought that might be robbing behavior so last night (Wednesday Sept 23) at 10pm, in the dark, in the drizzle, I went out and plugged the entrances to the hive with some grass just leaving 2 small openings in each to give the girls a better chance at defending their hives.

I'll keep you posted!

Tuesday Sept 22, 2015 Put the empty box back under the hives

So after much intellectual teeth gnashing I went out this morning before the rain, and put the empty box below my weak or 2 box hive but WHOA was it heavy to lift those top two boxes!!  So that's a good sign of how much honey is in the two boxes, and still taking syrup down!

As you recall, I have 4 boxes on the "strong" hive and I decided to put one box back under - remember we removed 2 boxes three days ago. Anyway, no way could I lift those top 2 boxes, so Mark hefted them, which exposed some honey. YIKES.  Then I pulled the bottom 2 boxes (not as heavy) and then I replaced an empty box and stacked the other four back on.

Now there is LOTS of activity outside that hive - I hope I did not stimulate robbing behavior.

Here are the videos of the activity this afternoon:

Removed bottom boxes Week 23

The local beekeepers group from Hastings came out to see my hives. We opened the weaker hive but Tom says it has plenty of bees and the capped honey looks good, so we removed the bottom empty box and I will keep feeding them.

That was on Sept 19 and today Sept 21, the bees were bringing in lots of orange pollen.

We also removed the bottom two empty boxes on the stronger hive, so it is 4 boxes deep.

Here are photos from this weekend - bees still on the goldenrod: