Yekta Sevim

What a comeback, Oguz — both hives back from swarms, and honey on top. One habit that helps in winter without opening anything: lift the back of the hive by hand every couple of weeks. If it suddenly feels much lighter than in autumn, that is the moment to act — since you don't feed sugar, a frame of your own honey kept aside does the job on a mild day. And in a long hive like a Layens, keep an eye on where the cluster is: in a cold snap bees can starve right next to honey that is on the far side of them. Where are your hives, if I may ask? I'm in İzmir.

Thom, a fridge only slows them down: wax moth eggs and larvae survive the cold and carry on once the comb warms up. Freezing is what kills them. In a home freezer (about 0°F / -18°C) a day is enough, two if the frames are packed tight, so cycling a few frames at a time through your small freezer works. Afterwards keep them sealed in a bag or tote so no moth can lay on them again.

Hi all. I'm Yekta, and I built this, so take it as a maker's post.

ARIA has a free map (no account) that shows, for any spot on Earth, whether bee forage is strong, starting or ending right now, which plants are flowering, and what comes next month. It is built only from open data: flowering observations from iNaturalist photos, satellite greenness and the weather. How it is made, and where it is known to be wrong, is public: https://www.ariabuzz.com/en/method

I think it can help with forage planning too: look at your place month by month, see where the gaps are, and plant for them.

Map: https://www.ariabuzz.com/en/map

It is an estimate, not a measurement, and the plant lists miss things that are rarely photographed in flower. A beekeeper on a Turkish island told me this week that andiz (Dittrichia viscosa) and ivy were missing from his October list, and both are now on the map. If it is wrong where you are, I'd really like to know: what it says vs. what you see. (There is a paid tier for the beekeeping app; the map is free and stays free.)

Jake, supersedure cells plus a sudden drop with honey still in the box fits a failed requeening well: if the new queen didn't come back from her mating flight, the colony slowly dwindles and the beetles and moths take over the weak hive. One more thing worth checking next season is mites. In much of the US late summer is when varroa numbers peak, and a colony can collapse fast then even with good stores. A mite count in July and August (alcohol wash or sugar roll) tells you early.

For the brood comb you saved: freezing the frames for two or three days before storing kills wax moth and beetle eggs, and keeps them good for swarm bait.

On the sugar water: I'd leave it out. An open bowl of syrup gets robbed hard, pulls in wasps, and can carry disease from one colony to the next; beekeepers who need to feed do it inside the hive. Clean water near the flowers, like your wildlife pan, is the better draw.

Seeing almost no bees can also just be the season. In a lot of places mid and late summer is a dearth, a stretch with little in bloom, and the bees are fewer and quieter then. Whatever flowers in your emptiest month is worth more to them than one more spring bloomer, and letting herbs bolt, as Tereza says, is one of the easiest ways to fill that gap.