Preparing the hives for cold weather

Now that the nighttime temps are dropping, it’s time to winterize the hives. This involves several things:

First, the 2:1 fall sugar syrup has to be removed. The bees have stored as much as they are going to between what they made naturally and the sugar syrup provided. Now it is up to them to use those stores wisely in order to make it until spring. So the top boxes and internal feeders are removed and crusty sugar water residue has to be washed off to prevent molding.

Second, new components have to be added to the hive configuration to allow a place for winter feed patties, as well as to provide a method of absorbing moisture. Moisture is actually more dangerous to the hives than bitter cold. This year I am experimenting with a number of absorbant materials, including pine shavings, wool, and pourous moisture boards.

Third, we like to add external wraps. This isn’t “required” (note: apparently absolutely NOTHING is truly “required” in beekeeping), but that wind gets cold, and I figure it can’t hurt. So again I have several different sizes and styles of wraps that I will be using this year. We will do this step a little closer to Thanksgiving, because it can get too warm on some sunny days.

Being inside the hives for this activity, I actually feel pretty nervous about most of them. I worry they don’t have enough bees to make a solid cluster (that is how they stay warm) and that they don’t have or won’t eat enough of their food stores. I find that the life of a beekeeper is sometimes 80% worrying!

This hive houses one of the colonies we captured from a swarm, and it has an unusual 4-super configuration (4 shallow boxes/no deeper boxes). There are zero bees in the top box, but it does contain a nice store of honey. So while it makes for a larger area to keep warm for the bees, it also provides additional back-up food if they need it. 

This hive has a moisture board on top. It is designed to absorb moisture that floats up. 

Under the moisture board is a wire-bottomed box that is filled with pine shavings, the same thing I use for the chicken coop. Again, moisture rises and the shavings will hopefully absorb it.

This hive also has a little built-in removable “door” which allows me to sneak in a food patty in the middle of winter without disassembling the hive and letting all the cold air in.

This is one of the 8-frame (narrower, lighter) hives, containing the other swarm we captured this summer. I love the little flowers that the daughter of the man we purchased the 8-frame equipment from painted on one of the boxes. This hive is configured to have one deep and two shallower supers for the main hive, and what is above that is for winter feeding/moisture.

This one also has the wire-bottom box filled with pine shavings. You can see this one also has additional ventilation holes along the sides.

Our other 8-frame hive with more of the daughter’s artwork. This one is configured like the other 8-frame hive.

Our two carryover hives from 2023, positioned behind the greenhouse. Will they survive the winter again? 

These two have the moisture board over pine shavings and little feeding door set-up, similar to the first hive. 

We also received our honey analysis this week. They microscopically inspect the individual pollen molecules in the honey. So cool! Our report indicates that the most prevalent pollen in our honey was from the brassica family, which probably means the nearby canola fields!

This is the front page of the report. To read the entire report using a web browser, you can hold a phone/tablet camera over the QR code below, and it will let you click into it!