Autumn tasks around the apiary

As the days shorten and the leaves turn yellow and begin to drop , your bees start to search around for flowers still providing pollen and nectar . There is a last licking to be had from cosmos and blackjacks . The black ironbark gums , Eucalyptus sideroxylon , with their large pink , red and cream blooms will be a bonus for those bees able to feed off them while the warm autumn days persist , but the cold frosty nights of June and July put a stop to the nectar flow , even while the flowers continue to bloom . The grass is now drying off and so the fire season starts , which compels the beekeeper to clean away long growth around his hives , as beehives , made of wood and filled with wax , are highly flammable . Bees are very sensitive to the shortening days after the equinox ( 20 March ) that heralds the start of autumn and winter and as the availability of pollen and the flow of nectar diminishes , the queen reduces her daily egglaying process . Brood rearing diminishes and the vacant brood cells are then filled by the house bees with honey , to create an insulation against the cold in the brood area . The brood rearing area , too , becomes smaller , but does not cease completely . The beekeeper should thus set about removing some of the last of the summer honey , to leave sufficient space for the bees for the winter period . He visits each hive and gently smokes the entrance and prises off the lid . Next , he smokes the bees down from the open super and removes only some of the capped honey frames . Depending on the strength of the swarm he would leave two to four frames as winter feed . He will move these frames to the centre of the super and fill the resulting vacant spaces on the outside with previously extracted drawn comb frames , or with frames fitted with full sheets of foundation wax . The metal queen excluder between the brood chamber and the supers will draw cold into the hive and should be removed . In fact the modern trend is to do without queen excluders altogether and allow the queen to move freely up and down the entire interior of the hive . Feral catch swarms sometimes occur at this time and should be placed in brood chambers that themselves are in sheltered places in the apiary . These bees still have time to harvest last flowers but will not have time to gather and store sufficient honey for the duration of winter , and the beekeeper will thus have to

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