how late in the season (in the north) can you "pack down the hive"?

[BBees]

Windfall,

Good question. A little background. Grew up in the agricultural sector. Started "playing" with bees back in late 70's when I was in the Vet School at Cornell. Work, family, and life kept it at a hobby level at best with many interruptions. Got really serious about 5 years ago trying to do my part to counter the CCD problem. Got hooked up with the local beekeeping club, and now I coordinate and lecture at our local beekeeping class though Cornell's Co-op extension. Colony numbers have ranged from 0 to 50 over the years. Currently working about 30 hives (number depends on the day) plus help a handful of students (and that's an education in itself!)  Probably killed at least 20-25 packages and nucs those first years. Finally got off that merry-go-round and started raising my own queens (with the help of forums like this.) This is the first year I haven't bought any bees! Basically if there's anything you can do wrong in beekeeping, I've probably done it. Many have been very expensive seminars! Still a very fascinating and addictive hobby (never want to make a business - takes all the fun out of it!)

Unknowingly, I've been doing my "queen encouragement" for the past three years. Finally dawned on me (yes I may be a slow learner and skeptical of new ideas, but I'm stubborn!) that my strongest colonies in the spring were the donor colonies for my queen rearing program and my over-wintered nucs. Really the only variable different from my other hives was that these were the colonies I was consciously adding drawn comb to the brood nest late in the season when I was feeding to help build the colonies. Then a couple years ago, Mother Nature decided to blow a couple of my hives over during a November storm. Putting them back together, I noted one was really full of eggs. When I went to check my records, sure enough it was one of my donor colonies. Then despite the incident, this was one of my strongest hives that spring. Then looking further back in my records, that's when I saw strong over-wintered colony pattern associated with these donors. Bottom line, feeding is good to build up stores, but without extra cells for the queen to lay in, we're strangling her laying capability when it's very important to raise winter bees. I think this is one of the rare "more is better" situations, the more winter bees, the better the hives chances of making through the winter.

Undoubtedly, this is not a controlled experiment, just musing of an old bee-crazy veterinarian following the numbers. Now the fun is to play with this management practice in hopes of further improvement, yet keep an open mind (and closed mouth sometimes) so we don't get tunnel-vision. I have a little trouble with it because it goes against historical conventional wisdom (did I say I was a skeptic?) Losing 10-50% of your livestock over the winter is just not acceptable to me (did I say I was stubborn?)

Part of the intrigue of this passion is the multilevel, interdependent variables needed to achieve a balanced hive. Keeps the brain young.

Sorry to be so long-winded.

Enjoy.

[T Beek]

BBees;  Thanks for the interesting observations.  More (winter) bees before Winter (by providing brood comb) = better chances for Spring survival.

thomas