Hi all just wondering if there is anyone around the Hunter valley that can help me with winter prep? It can get quite cold here but we don’t get snow it can get a little frosty with ice at times but not a lot. We have just finished summer and only just come into autumn, wondering what exactly we should be doing with our hive over winter. Our hive is only 3 months old but is quite the thriving hive. We currently have just 1 brood box and the super. I have ordered an ideal as the hive is very crowded bees bearding out the front of the hive every day and I can barely see the comb through all the bees in the side windows. Should I put this on now before it starts to get cold or just leave it. I don’t want them to swarm. I also read that some bees die over winter?
If you still have a nectar flow and your brood box is full, I would put the ideal on now and remove the Flow super. That way you won’t get crystallized honey in your flow frames during the winter nectar dearth, which would make harvesting next year much harder
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Thanks for the info. Do we have to remove the super for winter? If so How do go about that, I did an inspection today and a lot of the honey is uncapped still.