Bees still flying and bringing in bright yellow pollen in October in İzmir — do I keep feeding or leave them to it?
İzmir, second year, three hives. Reading this forum makes me feel like I'm in a different season from everyone else. My neighbours in the north of Europe are wrapping hives and I've got bees working something yellow every afternoon at 24°C, coming home with full baskets. There's a lot of it on the hillside — I think mostly some kind of late composite, and a bit of ivy in the shaded gullies.
So my question is whether the autumn advice on here applies to me at all. I started feeding 2:1 three weeks ago because everyone said to. Two hives took a few litres and stopped; the third hasn't touched it. All three feel heavy when I heft them.
Do I stop feeding, since they're clearly still bringing in food and don't seem to want syrup? And do I still reduce entrances and do all the winter preparation when our "winter" is rain and 8-15°C, with flying days most weeks? I don't want to copy northern practice blindly, but I also don't want to be the person who did nothing.
#mediterranean#autumn-feeding#pollen#turkey
▲ 8 votes💬 4 replies✅ Solved
4 replies
muglabalci · Oct 9, 2026 · ✅ Accepted answer
Muğla, fifteen years, so the same climate as you. Stop feeding — a colony that won't take syrup is telling you it doesn't need it, and forcing feed into a heavy hive just fills the brood nest. Our job in October is different from the north: keep them from becoming honey-bound, watch for robbing, and remember that our colonies rear brood most of the winter, so mites keep breeding too. That's the real risk here, not cold.
AbejasCarla · Oct 10, 2026
Andalusia, ten years, same story — 26°C here this week and brood in every hive. Reduce entrances only as much as the wasps and robbing require, don't insulate, and keep ventilation in mind because our problem is a warm damp hive, not a frozen one. elif_arici, the northern posts are still worth reading, just translate them into your own calendar.
AbejaMiguel · Oct 10, 2026
Jalisco, similar mild winter. Agreed on all of it. The one northern habit worth keeping: know your hive weights. Even a Mediterranean colony can go hungry in a wet February when it's too miserable to fly and there's brood to feed.
elif_arici · Oct 10, 2026
Feeders came off this morning, thank you. And the honey-bound warning makes sense — the third hive had capped stores creeping into the middle of the brood box and I couldn't work out why she'd stopped laying so much.