Unlike birds, honey bees do not fly south for the winter. Honey bees stay in place, hunkered down in their hive, and do their best to survive the winter months. Depending geographically on where the hive is located some winters are better than others. If the hive is on the Front Range the bees are in for a long winter, and your actions could be the difference between the hive surviving and the hive dying. The bees best chance for survival is a well winterized hive.
What exactly does it mean to winterize a bee hive? The answer to that question depends on the type of hive body the bees are in. For the sake of this post I will talk only about winterizing a Langstroth hive. The other two main hive body types used in the United States, the Kenyan Top Bar and the Warre, require a different approach for winterization. I need to be clear that the method I use to winterize my Langstroth hive does not necessarily translate to the other two hive body styles. The following advice applies to Langstroth hives only. If you are a bee keeper who keeps bees in either of the aforementioned hive body styles please share your thoughts and comments about getting your bees through the winter; the different perspectives would be great!
A honey bee hive should always be placed in a location that will receive full winter sun. This is step-one of winterizing a bee hive and is a decision that is made long before the bees go through their first winter with you. Make sure you know where the sun shines in your yard in the winter, so that when you are placing your hive in the spring it goes in a suitable location. The hive should also be placed out of the wind, or a wind block should be provided. For my apiary I use a tall cattle panel fence with several bails of hay stacked next to it and secured to the cattle panel. My wind bock is to the west of my hive, the direction where the majority of our wind comes from. My hive faces south, with east or south being the preferred directions to face a honey bee hive (honey bee swarms naturally gravitate toward hives facing east, south , or southeast).
It is important to remember that honey bees are not native to North America, and are certainly not native to the Front Range with elevations ranging from 5,000′ to 8,000′. The climate here is cold, windy, and dry. The wild forage for honey bees is slim at best. Honey bees living in these conditions are often stressed, leading to hives dying. Most hives that die on the Front Range die over the winter, and these hives almost always starve, or freeze, or both. The Pikes Peak Region loses 40% of its honey bee hives each year due to freezing, starvation, and disease.
I have found that the best month to winterize my hive is November. October can still be quite warm on those mild fall days, but typically once November rolls around the chill has set in for the winter. The exact day of the month that I winterize my hive is dependent on the weather. I watch overnight lows carefully. When the mercury is forecast to dip below 20 degrees F, I make my plan to winterize the hive.
When winterizing a Langstroth hive there are three primary considerations. The first is insulation, the second venting, and the third reducing the hive entrance. When insulating you want to select materials that can stand up to the weather, attract incoming solar radiation, and keep the cold out and the heat in. I wrap our hive first in a layer of thin but very dense foam. This base layer keeps the cold out and the heat in. Next, I wrap the foam with roofing paper. The roofing paper can take the weather and it is black, so it pulls in the heat of the sun. I wrap large bungee cords around the roofing paper to secure both layers in place.
The next winterizing step, venting the hive, is very important to keeping the bees warm during the winter. Just like you, a honey bee has difficulty staying warm if it is not dry. When honey bees cluster up for the winter they create a small amount of heat that keeps the bees alive. With that small amount of heat comes a small amount of moisture. When the moisture rises it can collect on the ceiling of the hive and drip back down on the bees. If this happens the bees will surely freeze to death. I vent the roof of my hive at a slight angle to allow the condensation to move to the edge of the ceiling so that if the water does drip it won’t drip on the bees.
And finally, the last step, reducing the hive entrance. This is very straight forward and is just what it sounds like. In the summer months when there is a great deal of activity a large “reducer” is place on the hive entrance. This larger “reducer” allows more bees to pass in and out of the hive at the same time, which is important when the bees are actively collecting nectar and pollen. In the winter though, when the bees only fly on warm days, there is not nearly as much “air traffic” in and out of the hive. A smaller “reducer” is exchanged for the larger summer model. This smaller “reducer” still allows the bees to enter and exit the hive, but it restricts the cold and wind.
So there you have it. Three easy steps to winterizing a bee hive. There are other considerations for the bees throughout the winter, most of them revolving around food and water. We’ll tackle those questions another time, so be watching for a follow-up post sometime in January. If you have questions, comments, links or stories please put them in the comments – I’d love to hear from you.
Here’s a quick video shot of winterizing the hive – smoking the bees to move them safely out of the way.
Photographs Copyright © 2011 B. Jack. All Rights Reserved.
