Helping the Bees Prepare for Winter

Time to help the bees prepare for winter. As the temperatures drop, the colonies adapt to a winter organizational structure for survival. There are things we as bee keepers can do to assist them.

First, we need make sure there is enough honey & pollen to get them through until the first flowers bloom. That’s always a judgment call.

There’s a joke among bee keepers “Ask ten bee keeper’s the same question and you’ll get ten different answers. Each answer is correct”. Hanging out with bee keepers you will often find many answers and strong opinions.

This year the farm got so much rain from multiple tropical storms that although the bees put up a good amount of honey in the spring and into July, the bees turned to their stores by late August. After so much rain, they depleted most of their winter honey by mid-September (when I usually harvest). So this year, I chose to take almost nothing from the 6 hives and instead have been feeding heavily to replenish their winter stores.

As it gets colder, each colony will form a ball of bees with the queen in the center. The hive at this stage is all females ~ the drones (male) were expelled from the hive with the change of the season, their only job has been completed which was to fertilize the queen. The ball of bees maintain the core temperature to 95 degrees to keep the queen safe in the center all winter. Tending her and passing food to her. The older bees will be on the outside of the ball. As the winter progresses more and more bees will parish to protect the queen and the ball becomes smaller and smaller.

The job of the bee keeper is to set the hive up in such a way as to make it cozy for the colony, but even more importantly, manage the moisture that the bees produce and give it a place to exit the hive safely. If the hive is too snug, the moisture will condense on the interior roof of the hive, and drip into the cluster and kill the hive.

I’ve been keeping bees for nearly 18 years and tried a number of winter management structures, with varying success - there are a lot of moving parts to managing hives and many times it’s hard to determine why a process fails, or succeeds.

Over the summer I’ve done all my integrated pest management procedures.

In the next month as temperatures get below freezing I will switch from feeding them with sugar syrup to a solid patty that won’t freeze. Also adding an insulated top to the hive with a vent hole facing front. This will provide a clear air flow up the interior front of the hive to vent moisture.

With some luck we’ve have healthy hives in the spring.

Peter Gengler

Beekeeper