Preparation for winter - newbee question 1

[folieadeux]

Folieadeux with respect you are overthinking everything.

Reduce the hive size to a brood box and a super of honey.

Reduce the size of the hive entrance.


Yanta.

OK I have a couple of questions about this bit ...

The 8 frame box with the swarm bees has 2 deep boxes of brood plus one deep box of capped honey plus a WSP on top that they had only drawn a bit of comb in last time I looked.

The 10 frame box of package bees has 2 deep boxes of brood plus a deep box of capped honey on top.

What do I do now?

There appear to be a lot of bees in both hives ... there are bees covering every frame. They are still really active & are bringing in a lot of pollen. Some of it is creamy coloured & appears to be from the 75 acres of maize here, some of it is bright orange & might be from the callistemon, the banksia & a couple of leptospermum we have in flower.
I'm not sure about nectar ... I've watched them closely & I can't honestly say I could identify any that looked like what I read nectar laden bees look like  ... : /
There have been a lot of drones out the front of the hive for a couple of weeks now, but I have only seen one instance of what looked like any aggressive behaviour from the workers towards them. That was 2 days ago when I saw a worker appear to be biting one of them.

I know I overthink everything :) 
I try not to give myself too hard a time over it :)
The world & everything in it simply fascinate me :)
And besides, there are an awful lot of people who underthink everything, & I figure it can't hurt to do a bit of the thinking they're not :)

[PhilK]

There appear to be a lot of bees in both hives ... there are bees covering every frame.

Bees covering every fram of all three boxes in both hives? I would say that is an excellent sign going in to winter and would leave the three boxes as they are. My understanding is that bees are great at keeping warm if there are plenty of bees to generate the heat - every frame covered in bees sounds good to me!

And besides, there are an awful lot of people who underthink everything, & I figure it can't hurt to do a bit of the thinking they're not :)

Ha! I'll be using that

[folieadeux]

There appear to be a lot of bees in both hives ... there are bees covering every frame.

Bees covering every fram of all three boxes in both hives? I would say that is an excellent sign going in to winter and would leave the three boxes as they are. My understanding is that bees are great at keeping warm if there are plenty of bees to generate the heat - every frame covered in bees sounds good to me!

I was hoping to keep both hives as double deeps (plus the deep of honey), so I hope you're right PhilK :)

And besides, there are an awful lot of people who underthink everything, & I figure it can't hurt to do a bit of the thinking they're not :)

Ha! I'll be using that

I'm glad I amused someone :)