Click Here if you listened. We’d love to know what you think. There is even a spot for feedback!
Read along below!
The Autumn Illusion:
Why Healthy Looking Colonies Can Still Collapse
By: David Burns
Fall is a season that allows beekeepers to take a breath. For most beekeepers, we’ve harvested our honey and treated for mites (again) and have equalized our hives by combining or sharing frames. Even though we think we have a good handle on our hives, we can easily be fooled. Last year many beekeepers thought they had strong colonies in the Fall only to find they were wrong, dead wrong. Many colonies crashed in the Fall. Are our observations misleading? Are we not noticing problems beneath the surface?
When I was a young beekeeper, I was fooled so many times in the Fall. My colonies appeared strong in population, foragers were bringing in golden rod and they had a decent amount of honey stored for Winter. Yet, year after year something was off. My bees either failed in the Fall and Winter or barely made it into Spring as a weak, sometimes queenless colony. What was fooling me into thinking my bees were strong for Winter when obviously they were not.
I found one special trait that can set beekeepers on the road to success and that is curiosity. I was curious about what was not right beneath the surface. I spent years keeping notes and observing every frame in the Fall and then determining which hives made it through the Winter as strong colonies. My detective work paid off one day when my notes revealed a connection to the failing hives. My hives that would fail in the Fall or Winter had a particular sign the others didn’t have. It was an ah-ha moment for me, but I had to test it out to be sure. Honey provides carbohydrates, but bees also need protein from pollen to raise and care for brood. In my area I just do not have very much pollen in late Summer and Fall. Even goldenrod just doesn’t give my bees what they need.
This was a few decades ago when I was just following the common practices in beekeeping. If my hives were light, I’d feed 2:1 sugar water. If they were heavy, no need to feed. Even with honey on board for Winter, the hives that were failing were consuming their own eggs and larvae. The eggs and larvae were drying up in the hive from nurse bees not being able to produce royal jelly. Searching for answers, some literature led me to try something different than the common practice of the day. I attempted to feed my bees 1:1 sugar water along with pollen patties and a tad of protein substitute added to my 1:1 sugar water, because nectar does contain pollen grains (protein). I discovered my hives were suffering from protein deprivation. The nurse bees were lacking nutrients to plump up their hypopharyngeal glands. In my research I found that for nurse bees to have plump hypopharyngeal glands producing royal jelly to be fed to young larvae, these nurse bees need a high-protein diet of pollen and or bee bread.
Nurse bees between 6-12 days old have active hypopharyngeal glands. Under a microscope this gland looks like a rope with clustered lobes full of royal jelly. The more complete their diet is, the more they can produce royal jelly to feed and care for young larvae. That’s what I was missing. My nurse bees didn’t have the protein they needed, so I substituted it in their 1:1 sugar water.
It worked. Not only did it work but I began seeing more frames of eggs and larvae and finally the larvae was swimming in pools of royal jelly in the Fall. These bees would emerge to become my bees of Winter physiology living 4-8 months taking my hives through Winter.
I was fooled back then and thought just because my hives were well populated with adult bees, all would be well for the rest of the Fall and Winter. Little did I understand back then that all these adult bees would age out and die out even before the first day of Winter.
Along with this discovery I also learned that I needed a great queen going into Fall. Since I raise queens, it’s easy for me to replace my queens in July and overwinter with a strong, great laying queen. During my late Summer and early Fall I experience a dearth. Even a great queen will slow down and lay fewer eggs during a dearth. I can’t afford this reduction and so by feeding my bees during a dearth 1:1 with a small amount of protein powder mixed in with the sugar water, this gave my bees the diet they needed.
Obviously along with more brood comes the threat of more mites. I make sure my mite levels are very low before I begin building up my Fall brood. Any hive that I neglect to greatly reduce my mites in later Summer and Fall always has a much less chance of surviving Winter, even if well fed.
It is understandable to assume that an active entrance and a heavy hive means the hive is healthy. But these are surface-level observations. Without checking for well-fed larvae, mite levels, queen fecundity, and food stores, beekeepers risk missing critical warning signs.
Without doing a deep dive and making sure they are well fed, especially with protein, they just cannot raise the bees of Winter physiology they need to survive Fall and Winter.
Fall is not the time to relax. Colonies that look good now may already be in decline. A strong adult population doesn’t guarantee survival — it’s the health and number of Winter bees that matter most.
Take time to verify what’s going on inside the hive. Address problems now while you still can. Catching hidden issues in September can mean the difference between a live colony in March or a dead out by January.
If you’d like to see more on how I prepare my bees for Winter in the Fall, check out my YouTube channel: www.honeybeesonline.com/davids-youtube-channel
