seminar or meeting I attend has in the program "Spring Management" but
I have never seen an article or presentation on "Fall Management".
While I have to agree that spring management is important, get it wrong
and all you will lose is a honey crop, get fall management wrong and
there is a good chance the hive will die over the winter. So I think "Fall
Management" is a vital phase of beekeeping, late in the year often
overlooked in the rush to take in the honey crop, this article will
deal with our methods during the late summer and early fall to ensure
early successful preparations for wintering.
Now is the perfect time to install new queens, this would be the first job in preparing for winter. Late summer might be an awkward time due to the size of the hives and the sheer volume of bees, but it can be done. We always recommend a two year cycle for queen replacement, at which time queens are getting old and worn out. You are putting a young, strong queen into the winter with more chance of success, which will produce a much bigger hive in the early spring, ultimately leading to a bigger honey crop next year. Setting the hive off to one side, place a new floor and empty box on the stand and replace the frames one by one until you find the queen. Nip her hard between thumb and finger, then drop her back into the hive. This will let the bees know they are queenless, then 24 hours later add the new queen.
A major problem with winter preparations is the late honey flow, the supers have been removed, and the hive is reduced to the minimum box configuration ready for winter. At the same time the bee keeper will feed vast amounts of sugar syrup without checking if it's needed, filling all available empty cells with stores. A late honey flow is also possible during an Indian Summer or even just a warm fall, left to their own devices the bees will fill the brood area with honey, cutting down on the brood area available. There is always a danger of robbing and bees will not hesitate to rob out weak hives, creating a mess of other problems apart from clogging the brood area with honey.
This sounds like a good idea lots of stores for winter, but will lead to a
loss of brood area, in practice it will drastically reduce the volume of young
bees going into winter, this in effect forces the hive to winter older bees,
reducing the population of young bees which will be necessary to feed brood
early in the spring. So it is not a good idea to remove supers too early, better
to leave one in place till after first frost, the bees will prefer to move
stores upwards rather than fill any brood space with permanent honey.