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We have 2 hives. Both have empty short supers on that the bees are patching up with propolis. All the frame edges, no combs built, they just hang out up there and look like they are preparing for winter. They have lots of honey down below, everything looks great. Is this the time to take off those extra supers they've done nothing with I've started feeding commercial pollen patties and they're just eating it up. They're hungry. I've put out bowls of water and they're visiting the water. I'm thinking about starting sugar water but I'm not eager to start that just yet. Can someone give me some advice on what we should be doing. All seems quite good.

It would help to know where you are located since all beekeeping is local. Please add a location to your profile, even if it is a general location like "Guilford County" or "Piedmont North Carolina."

I am beginning to reduce the size of my hives for winter. I use 10 frame equipment, and if the hive is not overwhelmingly large, I look to go into winter with 1 deep and 1 medium for brood (they will have honey and pollen stored in the outer frames of these boxes) and 1 medium of honey (natural or sugar water honey). If they don't have approximately 50 pounds of honey stored, you should consider feeding sugar water--2 parts sugar to 1 part water--the fall feed formula (1:1 sugar to water is a brood stimulus feed). My bees are moving down in the hives and the brood is lower in the hive than it was a month ago. I put excess food stores in my freezer and will put it back on a hive that needs it in late winter/early spring on the warm days when I can check hive status. Making sure they have adequate honey stores is more important now than pollen supplements, in my opinion. My bees are finding and bringing in decent amounts of natural pollen. The pollen is protein that the bees mix with nectar to make bee bread to feed the larvae. The adult bees need the nectar and honey for their own use now and over winter.

The bees are unlikely to draw out comb this time of year unless you are feeding huge amounts of 1:1 sugar to water and keeping the feeders full. If your supers are undrawn you should consider removing them. How many and what kind of drawn supers do the hives have?

Have you been monitoring for varroa mites? They rapidly rise in numbers this time of year and many honey bees begin cutting back on brood this time of year. This leads to more varroa infestation of less brood and can devastate the brood that will be your over winter bees you will need for spring build up. More hives dwindle and die in late winter/early spring than you can imagine because large numbers of brood in the fall were victims of varroa mites and too few healthy workers over wintered to allow the queen to ramp up brood production in early spring.

Thank you for your reply. I'm the one with 2 large deep brood boxes on. I made that mistake right from the start and don't know how to remedy that at this point, but I have bigger problems now. We have 2 -10 frame hives. The second hive has a large deep and a medium and a honey super. There is lots of beautifully capped honey in both. We did not plan on harvesting any but may take a couple of frames to taste from the honey super. I took your advice on checking for varroa mites. We have screened bottom boards which have been open all summer. I put the sticky board in the 2 large deep hive and have left it in there for over 48 hours. I was devasted when I counted 138 mites on the board just this AM. I believe I left it in too long. I cleaned it up, re-vasolined it and slid it back in. I did this with the other hive also. I will check it again in 24 hrs and see the result. I did not do the sugar shake because I didn't have any powdered sugar without cornstarch and am searching for some. I observed the bees for a while and did not see any on their bodies but they have to be there, with that many on the board. The double deep hive is bustling with activity. The workers are bringing in a lot of pollen on their legs. They appear very healthy, calm, good natured and happy. I started feeding them the patties because they went through a period where no one was bringing in pollen, they must have needed something else at that time. The problem for now is getting the varroa mite problem under control before winter. Any advice is greatly appreciated. I want to do all I can for them.

I went and did some research about the sticky board. The sticky board had been in for 2 1/2 days with the 138 count. I believe I may be borderline treatment.