Preparing Your Hives for Winter

Few Essentials for Winterizing Beehives.

Hearing about severe winter kill numbers of hives has prompted me to see how our Ozark Cedar Hives clients are doing.  We sent out a survey to over 100 beekeepers who had purchase our hives in the past 8 years.  14 responded from 10 different states.  With the low response, the results are not conclusive, but I feel are worth sharing.  These 14 beekeepers started with 102 cedar hives last fall and 18 died, 18% loss.   Of those that treated for varroa mites, losses were 12 of 91, just over 13% loses.  Either way these are far below national averages.   And for what it is worth, the four largest beekeepers account for 71 hives.  Together they only lost 4 hives. 

In my 13 years keeping bees my mistakes have taught me a few aspects of preparing my beehives for winter that cannot be overlooked.  I want to share with you what I have learned from these “fatal” mistakes in hopes to help you avoid them. 

The areas we will look at are honey stores, varroa mite control, bee population, and protection from prevailing winds.  My experience comes from Northwest Missouri about 50 miles south of the Iowa line.

The beekeeper must develop a way to assure each hive has 40 to 60 or more pounds of honey in the hive when the nectar stops flowing in late summer or fall.  Obviously the farther north the more honey is needed.  But also a super strong hive with very high bee population should be left with an extra 10 pounds or more of honey.  I have had strong hives starve out in late Spring because of  greater numbers and higher honey consumption.

Another part of honey stores I learned the hard way, was that there can be no empty spaces in the top box and preferably hardly any empty space in the next hive body or super down from the top.  Your hive could have the required weight of honey but if the top box has several frames, empty the bees are in trouble.  The cluster can get caught up there in a cold period with honey below and no way to use it.  If we have good rains in summer we will harvest honey three times.  Early June, Late July, and late September or October.  Typically our hives will have two deep hive bodies on the bottom and two to four medium supers above.   If rains are still good at the late July harvest and the two hive bodies are mostly full we will take all the supers for harvest.  But if the bottom hive body is light and especially we’re having dry weather I”ll leave a medium super that is half or ¾ full so we’ll be sure to have honey to leave for fall.  If they continue to do well we can always harvest that super in October.  Often our hives will have the second hive body from the bottom mostly full and a full super on top with a nearly empty hive body on the bottom.  This does not bother me.  This tends to happen because in April we are adding supers as the bee numbers are building up and nectar getting strong hoping to avoid crowding and swarming tendencies.  Sometimes they’ll move down into the bottom hive body but other times they do not use it much.  If we have the chance we will swap the two hive bodies in early summer.  

Usually at the early October harvest we are taking partially filled supers for harvest and leaving the top one full, trading out empty frames with full frames if we have to.  Often, we will use full frames of honey taken from one hive to fill the top box of another hive.  Or swap full frames for partially full frames.  If there is not honey in the hive or from another hive to do this then feeders are set on and fed 2 parts sugar to one part water so the bees can fill any empty spaces in that top box,  Many hives end up with 80 pounds of honey stores.  Just don’t have empty space up there. 

Varroa mites.  Treat or not to treat.  I say treat.  Several years ago we were losing our best hives in early fall.  Great laying queens were perfect for varroa production.  If the beekeeper insists on not treating and hoping for natural resistance I get that, but you must do regular testing to know for sure if your bees are controlling the mites.  Alcohol wash is the best way I believe to test for mites.  For several years we used Formic Pro in April and August with good control.  Lately, my brother has been making oxalic acid pads that are doing well.  I ordered 14 VSH queens from Cory Stevens this year hoping to have resistant bees, but we will need to test them for a while to know for sure. 

Very early on I realized that a weak hive was a waste of time to let go through winter.  They just did not have enough bees to make a sufficient cluster especially in early Spring with winter die off.  IN recent years we often do not have any weak hives going into fall.  When I do have a few, the best way is to Join two or even three weak hive into one.  I leave the Stronger hive in its location and use a couple layers of newspaper to set the weaker hive on top.  If the bees are locked in three days they will reorient to the new location, supposedly.  Finding the queen would be nice but often is so disruptive and still not find her, I just let the bees decide which queen they want.  Seems crazy but it has actually worked well in the past.  You will have to come back later and work on getting the honey stores compacted into fewer boxes and not leave empty space before winter.

A couple of years ago, I lost four hives and all of them were setting in a spot with little protection from west winds.  Hives just a few a hundred feet south or north were fine.  I had even wrapped them with tar paper and left the ventilation slot open in the top front.    WE have hives in four locations, all sitting on the east side of a heavily wooded fence or woods.    Now I have placed large round bales behind those I felt needed more wind protection (west side) and a couple of bales at the north end of each group. I am also using quilt boxes with cedar wood shavings below the inner cover and top cover.  Since I am placing the quilt boxes on late, I duck tape the seam between the top super and the quilt box to keep any wind from penetrating.  I am careful to leave the small ventilation slot open.  With the wood shaving this may not be necessary, for ventilation, but I make the slot on the bottom of the quilt box for a top entrance if snow depths are an issue. 

I also feel that the thickness of the wood and the type of wood is important to protect bees from cold and heat.  Our Ozark Cedar Hives have always been at least 7/8” thick.  Now that we have our own saw mill, the hive wall is 15/16”.  Cedar is much more dense than other wood. Commercially milled pine lumber is only ¾” thick. 

The last thing I will mention, is I have gone to all solid bottom boards.  Without really testing for it I noticed a few years ago that all my best hives were with solid bottom boards compared to screened.   We also do not use hive stands.  All hives are on flat paving blocks or cedar boards.  NO air is blowing under the hives.  Another reason for this is that by May, many hives have two deeps and 4 medium supers.  I can’t imagine getting heavy supers off the top of that stack if it were up on a hive stand. 

There are other important aspects of wintering a beehive, but I hope these experiences will help you get your bees to Spring strong and healthy. 

May God bless you and your family,

Bob and Kathy Owen, Ozark Cedar Hives.