We have had a very successful HONEY year for our little bee apiary. The girls (worker bees are all girls) have been working really hard. If interested, a pound of our pure local honey is $10. Yes that is more expensive than most grocery store honey but most grocery store honey is only 25% pure honey. If you want corn syrup don't buy from a local Beekeeper. Beekeepers honey is 100% pure honey from bees not from corn.
If you are interested, send an email to: jimtaylor4383@yahoo.com or use the contact button on https://taylorstrails.com/ and we can make arrangements. Please share if you know someone who may be interested.
Hives are all set for winter. Insulation wrap, mouse guard on entrance, top entrance/exit in case snow blocks the bottom entrance, sugar cake in the top to make sure enough food to make it through the winter.
On a warm day, 60+ degrees, in late January I will open the hives to look at the sugar. If it is almost gone, the bees are low on honey and may need help.
To me, community feeding is dangerous to your apiary. First of all if you are going to have a community feeder, be sure it is at least 300 feet away from your bee hives. Once you put out a community feeder, the bees in your area start looking around to see if there are any weak hives to rob honey from. After I put our my community feeder, I lost two small hives within a few days. The bees from a strong hive over run the weaker hive and took all of the honey and chased away the bees from the weak hive. You may have a different experience but I don't plan to feed this way again.
In my opinion, every hive should have some type of hive beetle trap between April and September, in So. Illinois. Hive beetles may only be a problem in southern states but I know they are a problem in Southern Illinois, south of Effingham. If hive beetles infest a hive, the queen will leave the hive along with the colony. It only takes about a week once they get started. I have had this happen to me twice and hope to keep this from happening again. My strategy is, 1st keep the entrance small, about 4 inches, this makes it easier for the entrance defenders to attack the beetles before they get in the hive. 2nd in February I will install an inside upper feeder and start feeding the bees to get the queen started laying eggs to build up the colony. 3rd in March, about 6 weeks after starting to feed the bees, I will remove the upper feeder, so the bees don't make honey out of sugar water, and install a honey super with one or two beetle traps on the corners. I won't put a second honey super on the hive until about June when the first honey super should be pretty full. If you allow too much space for the bees, they have a hard time defending all of the space against the hive beetles.