Getting ready for Winter

It’s September 16, 2016 as I write this in southern Rhode Island. People have asked about
preparing hives for winter, so I’m writing down the things that I worry about and do, as
well as some things that I don’t do.

Colonies must be healthy to make it through winter. How to keep your hives healthy so
they’re ready to face winter is a different article: this paper assumes you have healthy
colonies. It is about structural and management things you can do with healthy hives,
starting around Labor Day. It also assumes you know enough about beekeeping to be able
to figure out why you’re doing some of this stuff.

I should also say that I’m accustomed to using deeps, not mediums, so you should read this
with an eye toward how your hive is actually structured. It’s probably not a bad idea to
consider a medium frame as equivalent to half a deep for purposes of this article, but I
don’t actually know that from personal experience.

1. Mites and Diseases. Your colony will shortly be switching over to making “fat” or
“winter” bees, with large fat deposits, detachable wing muscles so they can vibrate
effectively, and other modifications so they can live for three months and keep the
cluster warm. If the colony has high mite counts when these bees are being “made”, your
winter bees will be compromised and the colony will die before spring. So make sure your
mite count starts low in September and stays low. One combination of mite treatments
that’s getting a lot of press this year is MAQS in August followed by OA vapor or drip in
December when there’s no brood. Keep monitoring mite counts as long as your bees are
flying.

2. Mouse Guards. Mice will move in and severely damage or kill a colony if you don’t
prevent it. It’s warm and cozy and everything in it is edible. You can buy mouse guards, or
make them from #4 hardware cloth. I do both, the bees don’t seem to care which kind I
use. Leaving mouse guards off your hive going into winter is (another) inexcusable mistake
I’ve made and I’ve been made to regret it every time. Lesson learned.

3. Nursery Space. You’re trying to strike a balance between making sure there’s
enough food crammed into the hive and making sure your queen has enough room to lay
enough eggs to assure a large cluster of winter bees. It’s been suggested that she should
have room to lay in 6 deep frames and should keep both sides of them full of brood. But in
the meantime, the foragers are trying to fill every cell with honey, so you may occasionally
have to spin out some frames to empty them so the queen has room to lay. Eventually
though, she’ll pretty much stop and that’ll be that. The foragers will backfill old brood
cells with honey for winter.

4. Feed. There’s a lot of discussion of what’s best to feed them. My personal theory is
that 2/1 sugar syrup is best from after you take your supers off until temps drop
regularly below 50 degrees, but there’s a broad range of opinions on that. The goal with
the 2/1 sugar water is to make sure you colony has 80 to 100 lbs of food stored by the
time you stop feeding them sugar water. They may or may not cooperate with that. Once
the temps are regularly below 50, stop feeding until you have to start feeding them
sugar/fondant/candy if/when they run out of stores. How to make and feed
sugar/fondant/candy is a big topic beyond the scope of this article.

5. Pollen Patty: It won’t hurt to put a bit of pollen patty into the space above your
top frames around now. Your queen’s going to be working hard making winter bees, she’ll
need the protein. If the workers don’t take it, remove it after two weeks and try again
every few weeks until it’s really cold.

6. Ventilation. Your bees will need air coming in at the bottom and a hole to expel
warm moist air at the top, just like your house needs ventilation through soffit or ridge
vents. Figure out a way to have a hole in the face of the hive at the top – one of the
easiest ways is to get or make a Betterbee Shim designed for that purpose, which will also
give you space into which you can put food when you need to. In addition to being a vent,
the top hole is also an exit when downstairs is blocked by snow or dead bees, so don’t
screen it off in the winter. And if the telescoping cover obscures the top hole, push your
telescoping cover forward to make sure bees can get in and out.

7. Warmth. As it gets colder, close off your screened bottom board if you have one,
so that it’s completely closed by November. This will reduce wind impact during the winter
and allow the queen to lay eggs right to the bottom of the lower frames if she wants when
spring buildup arrives. Some people also reduce the size of the bottom entrance from fully
open to less open – I don’t, primarily because my mouse guards tend to have that effect
anyway. But you can do it. I don’t think it’s necessary if you’ve got a mouse guard that
restricts things anyway.
8. Merge Hives. You’re better off merging too many hives than too few. The weak hive
you don’t merge now will die, so you’re better off merging no matter what it takes. If you
have any reason to doubt that a colony is strong enough to make it through winter, you
should merge hives so that the end result is nothing in your bee yard but strong hives. If
that means you merge with a friend, do it, because having a friend who will gladly split
their very strong hive with you in June is better than having a dead hive in your back yard
and nothing to talk with your friend about all winter.

9. Moisture Control. OK, you’ve got air coming in at the bottom and air going out at
the top. That’s good, but there will be a time when that’s not enough. So I replace my inner
cover with a solid piece of homosote – it’s like a board made of wood fiber, you can get it
at home supply stores and it absorbs moisture like nobody’s business. So when the cluster
metabolizes carbohydrate staying warm, and the moist air from that metabolism rises
from the cluster, the excess moisture gets absorbed by the homosote. It’s a fail safe. If
you left the inner cover on instead, any excess moisture would condense into droplets and
rain down on the cluster, killing it. The homosote goes on top of the shim that has the vent
hole in it, with the food space directly underneath it and the outer telescoping cover
above. The inner cover can be stored on top of the homosote or in the shed, it’s
unnecessary during the winter if you’re using homosote.

10. Wind Screen. You can wrap your hives with tarpaper, or with pink solid foam
insulation, or not wrap them at all, or buy a bee cozie for each hive – but remember that
bees in Rhode Island don’t freeze to death, they starve, so whichever option you choose
will do a lot for your peace of mind and only a little for your bees. But it will do something
so if you have the time and inclination, go ahead. But don’t worry if you don’t have time or
money to do it, it’s unlikely to spell the difference between colony life and death. But one
thing I would definitely do is make sure there’s some kind of barrier behind the windward
(usually north) side so that the prevailing winter wind doesn’t hit the hive directly, because
it can cause enough loss of heat to stress the cluster if for some reason it’s weak already.
Put a few hay bales behind the hive, staked down so that they don’t blow over onto it.

11. Straps and Bricks and Stability. You won’t be out there every day and the hive is
really heavy, so make sure it’s on top of something stable that won’t topple over if the
frost heaves really get going. Put something heavy on the top, so the top cover doesn’t
blow off. Straps may be a little over the top (I don’t strap) because you’ll be going in to
check them and the straps can be a pain – maybe bungee chords would be easier.