Autumn

Autumn is when you find out whether the summer's work was enough, and there is still time to fix it if it was not.

• Heft the hive rather than guessing, aiming for a colony heavy enough to carry itself through winter with reserve to spare.
• Take the supers off before you feed: syrup stored above the nest is not honey, and a colony fed under a crop puts sugar in your jars.
• Feed now if the hive is light, because bees need warmth to process syrup, and that window closes once nightly temperatures fall below about ten degrees; feed too late and it sits uncured, worse than not feeding at all.
• Fit mouse guards as the cluster forms and entrance defense weakens, since a mouse that gets in first can wreck comb all winter.

Stores, feeding, and mouse guards belong to the same few weeks.