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The dead hive that isn’t

Saturday was a perfect day on the northwest coast. Rumor claims that all the elements come together only six days a year: warm enough to go coatless, clear enough to see the sky, dry enough you don’t dissolve. It was a perfect day to take apart my dead-outs and do some maintenance.

Late December, when I was assessing my losses, I closed up the dead hives to keep out local varmints. One loss that was particularly heart-wrenching was a hive I had built for a gorgeous swarm. I was out of equipment at the time, so I rigged a hive from miscellaneous parts and called it the drainfield hive, since that’s where it was.

Just before Christmas the cluster was the size of a baseball. I counted it as a dead-out because I knew it couldn’t possibly survive. But I didn’t seal the hive because even if they were doomed I wouldn’t deny their freedom. As the weeks went by, I totally forgot to go back and tape it shut.

January was cold and nasty. The ice storm dropped two sixty-foot trees within inches of that hive, one on either side of it. Snow piled on its roof and blocked the landing board but I did nothing. After all, the hive was dead.

Fast forward to last weekend. The sky was bright and cloudless. The occasional whiff of woodsmoke reminded me it was still cold, but the sun felt like warm toast on my cheek. Trillium and skunk cabbage sparkled beside the stream where a fingerling made a splish-splat in the riffles. A steller’s jay glinted blue and metallic in a nearby cedar. All around, things croaked and twittered and cawed.

As I approached the drainfield I saw honey bees coming and going with determination etched on their faces. I immediately chastised myself for not locking down the hive—no doubt these were robbers, looting for all they were worth.

I threw off the lid to have a look, muttering all the while about beekeeper incompetence. But, to my utter astonishment, I found not comb rent asunder by robber bees but a basketball-sized cluster covering four frames of brood! Whoa! How the heck did that happen? How could it happen?

Needless to say, I am elated but still a bit nonplussed. It seems impossible that a cup of bees could morph into a full-size cluster in spite of rain and snow and ice and wind and cold and falling trees and beekeeper abandonment. But it did. It proves we never know it all. It proves nature always has the last word. It proves we should never give up . . . or give in. It proves that honey bees rock.

Rusty
HoneyBeeSuite

The drainfield swarm.
The drainfield swarm.

How much honey for a warm winter?

Lots of folks want to know if bees consume more food in warm winters or cold winters. I’ve been searching for scientific data on this for quite a while but I haven’t found any. So, for what it’s worth, I hereby offer my opinion.

Based on hearsay and my own beekeeping experience, I believe that bees expend more energy—and so eat more food—in warm winters than in cold ones. As counter-intuitive as that may seem, I’m convinced it’s a common occurrence.

In very cold winters the cluster remains intact for long periods, brood production is extremely low or non-existent, and all other hive activities come to a standstill. The bees vibrate their wing muscles to create heat and the highest temperatures are found in the center of the cluster, but that temperature can be lower than when brood is present.

In warm winters, however, with occasional balmy days and temperatures that rise into the 40-60°F (4.5-15.5°C) range, the bees begin doing other things. They may take cleansing flights, some search for pollen, the undertaker bees carry dead bodies from the hive, house bees clean debris from the nest and sweep cobwebs from the corners. Brood production may increase, and with increased brood production comes the need for consistently higher temperatures in the nest along with constant feeding and tending of the larvae.

All of these activities require energy even though some of them are not very effective. Foraging for pollen, for example, requires lots of energy and it may or may not produce good results. The higher than normal temperatures seem to “trick” the bees into searching for something that may not be there—or may not be found in sufficient quantities to make the trips worthwhile. We’re talking cost/benefit ratios here, and the benefits will depend on local conditions.

And don’t forget, the nights are still cold. The cluster resumes warming itself during the long winter nights, so it is still expending a lot of “keep warm” energy even though the daylight hours are warmish.

In addition to tricking the bees, I think beekeepers, too, get lulled into thinking that warm weather means the bees will have plenty of food. I, for one, have been seduced into believing that winter stores would last longer during a balmy winter. But experience has shown otherwise, and I now check for honey stores earlier in warm winters than in frigid ones.

Rusty
HoneyBeeSuite

The bees were flying from this top-bar hive one day after the photo was taken.
The bees were flying from this top-bar hive one day after the photo was taken.

What beekeepers do in winter

First and foremost, we miss our bees. That must sound silly to a non-beekeeper, but the rest of you know. It’s lonely out there, not having to duck and run, not sporting red welts on your hands. It’s eerily quiet. And like returning home from summer camp, the separation anxiety can kill you.

I worry about my bees. Do they have enough to eat? Are they warm? Do they have sufficient books and board games to keep them occupied? Will I ever see them again?

Cooking with honey whenever I can
Cooking with honey whenever I can

But for direct physical contact with stinging insects, I’m just as bee busy in winter as in summer. On cold rainy nights, bee reading beckons. A pile of books, like that tower in Pisa, tilts from my desk. Columns of reading material rise stalagmite-like from the carpet. Bits and bytes clog up my Kindle. I think about reading more than I actually do it, but it is pleasurable all the same. Like a new cookbook, a new bee book is more about anticipation than substance.

All of which reminds me of the plethora of recipes I want to try. Honey cakes and honey muffins, honey jams and honey mustards. And while I’m still in the kitchen there is wax to melt, candles to mold, and soap to wrap into gifts.

Bee-pollinated peach pie
Bee-pollinated peach pie

When I don’t feel like cooking or melting, I scan the seed catalogs for bee friendly plants, for flowers with blue pollen, for blooms with scads of nectar, and petals that look great in bee portraits. I imagine intricate bee gardens where something is always in bloom. In my mind’s eye I see honey bees, mason bees, and bumble bees vying for the sweetest meal. I see cheerful blossoms bending under their weight, happy to donate their burden of nectar.

Winter is the time when I draw sketches of new equipment or variations on the old. I dream up new ways of feeding, of catching swarms, of raising queens. I build supers, wire frames, and paint and repair whatever equipment is not in the field. I peruse the bee catalogs while jotting down lists and ideas for the year ahead. I think about the perfect bee suit, about a veil that doesn’t collapse against my face, a suit with pockets aplenty for hive tools, notebooks, cameras, voice recorders, dog treats, and duct tape.

A dusting of snow
A dusting of snow

The best part is preparing for the biggest honey crop ever. That crop is on its way. It’s coming next year. Always next year. I think about designing a new label for my boxes of comb honey—in fact, designing a whole new box. I think about inventing a new candy called a HoneyBeeSuiteSweet. Or a HoneyBeeSuite2. I discover, much to my horror, that I’ve spelled “trophallaxis” wrong in no fewer than six posts—for all the world to smirk over.

And while all this is going on, the calendar flips by. There are all those holidays to plan for and, before you know it, it’s time for adding candy boards, mixing up pollen patties, and checking on the queens. Suddenly the buds start to swell on those bigleaf maples and a five-eyed furry creature is peeking up at you from the safety of her hive. Her antennae sample the air. She doesn’t quite take off, but you can see her thinking about it. You relax. Life begins anew.

Rusty

HoneyBeeSuite.com

A maple in winter
A maple in winter

How to prepare your hives for winter: a checklist

How you prepare your hives for winter depends on where you live, so some of the suggestions below may not apply to you. Nevertheless, the list may give you some ideas. Although the calendar still shows September, those long, dark, cold days of winter are just around the corner. It’s time to get busy.

  • Remove empty supers. Make the space inside the hive commensurate with the size of the colony. If necessary, reduce the hive volume with follower boards, especially in a top-bar hive. A proper interior size is less drafty and less likely to harbor intruders.
  • Check for a laying queen. You should see at least some brood in your hive. If you don’t, order a queen as soon as possible.
  • Check for colony size and combine small ones. Come spring it is better to have one live colony than two dead ones.
  • Check for honey stores. If your hives are too light, it’s time to start feeding with a vengeance.
  • Assure that the honey frames are in the right place, that is, they should be on both sides of the cluster and above it in a Langstroth hive. Move frames around if necessary. In a top-bar hive, put the cluster at one end of the hive and put the honey frames next to the cluster on the other side. This way, the colony can move laterally in one direction to find food.
  • Reduce hive entrances if you haven’t already. It’s time for mice and other small creatures to find a snug and warm overwintering place—one filled with honey is especially attractive.
  • Remove weedy vegetation from the base of the hive. Vegetation is a convenient hiding place for creatures who may want to move into the hive and it can be used like an entrance ramp or stepladder.
  • Use an inner cover under your outer cover for greater insulation.
  • Put a slatted rack in your hive if you don’t already have one. The slatted rack adds space between the bottom of the cluster and the drafty hive opening.
  • Put a wintergreen grease patty in each hive. Grease patties won’t control a large mite infestation, but they can slow the increase of mites during the winter months.
  • If you live in a wet area, make sure your lids will keep out the rain. Make any needed repairs now.
  • If wintertime moisture is a problem in your hives, add a quilt box above the brood boxes.
  • Provide ventilation for your hives: air must be able to come in through the bottom and out through the top. I like to use a screened bottom board all winter long.
  • If high winds are a problem you may consider adding a skirt around the base of your hive to reduce drafts. Although you want adequate ventilation, you don’t want a wind tunnel.
  • If high winds are a problem, secure your lids with heavy stones or tie-downs.
  • If high winds are a problem, you may want to shield upper ventilation holes from side winds.
  • If high winds are a problem, consider providing a windbreak.
  • If extreme cold is a problem, consider wrapping your hives with insulation or tar paper . . . but, again, don’t forget the ventilation.
  • If winter flooding is a problem, move the hives to higher ground now while the weather is still dry.

Rusty
HoneyBeeSuite

How to over-winter a nuc

After my last post, “How to keep queen bees in reserve,” a number of people asked, “Then what? What do you do with them in the winter?”

Last year was the first year I attempted to keep nucs over winter and it worked really well for me. Bear in mind, however, it was my first year, so I have limited experience. That said, I’ll explain what I did:

Study your winter temperatures carefully if you plan to do this, because it doesn’t take much freezing weather to kill a colony that is so small. On the other hand, it is great to have queens available in the winter season. If you don’t have your own, there is no other place to get them until spring.

Rusty
HoneyBeeSuite