I need your thoughts, I have been open barrel feeding my colonies. When I check the weight of hives, I find many of them feel excellent or normal, and others are small and light weight (too light). Since the hives are small and light weight, I guess that there is something wrong and they will not make it on their own. I would like to take steps to make the best of the situation. I treated for mites properly and all is in order. My goal is to come through winter with as many healthy hives as possible. Here are some of my options: 1. Just feed them additional syrup with a pail on top and try to overwinter them above a strong colony. 2. Unite 1 light weight colony with 1 strong colony (newspaper method). 3. Unite two light weight colonies together to try make one strong one(newspaper method) 4. Give each light weight colony a new queen( I have some mating nucs that I could unite them with), and then feed them additional syrup. Chris Hiemstra Ontario, Canada