This weekend I took a look at the two hives at my house to evaluate their health and see how they were doing in getting ready for winter.

I went out early in the morning when the temperature was in the lower 60s, and the bees were still semi-clustered together from the cool night temperatures.

The first hive looked good. They had a moderately strong population and the queen was still producing brood on several frames.



The second hive also looked good, and was easier to tell where they were clustering (in the photo below). Their population also looked strong and I saw plenty of new brood and even spotted the queen.



Both of the hives at my house are queen-right and have brood in all stages of development.

I've noticed no drones in the last few weeks, I guess they've all been kicked out already?

The hives were surprisingly light on honey stores. The fall has been dry and the honey they had in the brood boxes after we extracted this summer has almost been completely depleted, and we aren't seeing a huge fall nectar flow (at least I'm not) right now.

I mixed a couple of gallons of 2:1 sugar syrup and added some Honey-B-Healthy to it.



With each hive having 2 gallons in their feeders, I closed them back up. I'll check on them again in a week or two and see how they're doing.