How to properly prepare bees for winter?

In order for each honey collection season to be successful, it is necessary to properly prepare the bees for winter. Experienced beekeepers are guided by this wisdom. But what should a novice beekeeper do?

To begin with, familiarize yourself with the peculiarities of bees’ wintering, study their winter diet and follow the advice of more experienced comrades.

Autumn revision

An autumn check of the bee colony is necessary to ensure that all worker bees are strong, resilient and healthy by spring.

Of course, active measures should be carried out throughout the honey flow, but an inspection before winter is an integral part of proper and timely preparation for winter.

To be more precise, this is the very first stage. In the process of work, shortcomings are revealed that can become an obstacle to successful wintering.

The beekeeper must take into account the following nuances:

• To estimate the number of young worker bees, thanks to which the entire family will survive during the cold, the number of brood is taken into account.
• The most important moment is the age of the queen bee, since the ability to sow brood depends on it. Accordingly, the increase in the number of the entire family.
• Quality indicators of food supplies – honey and bee bread. If their quality or quantity does not meet the requirements, the bee family will be weakened, many individuals will die.
• The condition of worker bees – their activity, performance, presence of diseases.
• Suitability of honeycombs for wintering.

To assess all the nuances, the beekeeper must carefully examine the hives and insects. The inspection is carried out under favorable weather conditions, since otherwise the usual life regime for the bees is disrupted.

Formation of the nest

The nest is formed in the warm season, before the cold weather sets in. That is, during the period when the insects are not yet swarming. In this case, the characteristics of the family, their behavior, routes for movement around the hive, etc. are necessarily taken into account.

There are 3 main methods:

One-sided view

It involves placing a frame with honey on one side, into which 3 kg of the product is placed. Then a structure with one and a half kilograms of honey is installed, then 3 more frames are installed, filled with 2 kg of honey each. At the end, a frame with 2,5 kg and 2 structures with 3 kg are mounted.

This way you can save 1-2 kg of feed (unlike the next method).

Two-way method

Two frames with two kilograms of honey are installed. After them, two more structures with 2 kg of feed, frames with 2-2,5 kg are mounted on the extreme side. The total consumption of the product is 3-4 kg.

Beard

The most economical method, which involves installing a frame in the center with a small amount of food. Then, structures are placed, extending from the central part of the hive, into which an even smaller amount of honey is placed.

Thus, the consumption is from 10 to 15 kg. Additionally, wooden bars are mounted perpendicularly to serve as guides. Most often, the method is used for weak bees. It is used extremely rarely among experienced beekeepers.

Wintering of bees in the wild

Some beekeepers leave the bee colony to overwinter in the wild, that is, practically in the open air, but they take into account the climatic conditions.

The fact is that in regions with increased snowfall and stable frosts, bees can survive easier in natural conditions. It is known that under the snow cover the temperature regime always remains at the same level, it is equal to 0 degrees (snow has low thermal conductivity).

This is a favorable habitat for insects. But there are some subtleties:

• The first flight of bees should be carried out early.
• In 2 cases, the lower and upper flight holes are left open. The upper ones are where the bulk of the bees are concentrated, as they are the forage ones. The lower ones contain honeycombs with little honey, so they are considered air cushions, due to which the space above the frames increases.
• If bees leave the hive, they die, but the damage is considered minor, since it is usually the sick individuals that fly out.

Wintering in a moss house

Being in a moss house during the winter, bees easily survive very windy and harsh weather without losing their bee colony.

The feeding is carried out according to the type of feeding in a multi-hull hive, which leads to a minimum consumption of feed honey. And this, in turn, does not overload the intestines of the bees, which has a positive effect on the condition of their body.

And wooden hives are not subject to rotting. The temperature in the moss house ranges from -2 degrees to +2 degrees.

A mandatory condition is the distance of the groundwater relative to the soil surface.

In multi-body hives

Even moderately weak families can spend the winter in a multi-hull hive, but this method is more often used for honey production in large quantities. The reason for this is the high productivity of bees, as opposed to frame maintenance. And feeding is considered simplified.

In a multi-hull hive, small frames are placed, which reduces the amount of honey stored for the winter. But there are some peculiarities – it is necessary to provide for the transition of the cluster to free frames.

It is known that the club loses its activity in frosts, so it does not move to the side. But it easily rises upward, that is, to where the food is warmed by oxygen. Therefore, there is no need to bend around the plane.

In the sun loungers

The main advantage of wintering in sunbeds is the low level of labor intensity of the actions performed, since there is no need to move heavy containers of honey.

Therefore, 1 person can prepare the beds. Another advantage is the simplicity of preparing insects in the open air, because this process begins at the end of summer.

Features:

• Preparation consists of delivery to late honey plants and feeding the bees.
• Immediately after this, the family’s condition is checked by removing the store add-ons.
• Since the hive width is too large, the beekeeper reduces these parameters. He moves the frames away from the entrance, which will create a kind of vestibule where the air will be warmed. This will ensure normal air exchange and temperature in the bee room.

In the garage

If you want to leave your apiary in the garage for the winter, take care of soundproofing. Most likely, there are neighboring garages nearby. This means that cars will regularly drive past your box.

They disturb insects. Insects eat more honey and overload their intestines. Families become weak by spring.

Insulate the garage with foam or mineral wool. Thermal insulation should be done from the inside and outside. Seal the cracks. Install an electric convector and maintain the temperature at 6-8 degrees above zero.

Make a vapor barrier. Cover the room with polyethylene film.

In the cellar

For wintering bees in a basement or cellar, try to choose a deep room. But if it is located almost at ground level, then you will have to insulate the ceiling and walls. Do not forget that underground, as a rule, there is high humidity.

At high humidity bee products sour and mold forms. The winged workers die of hunger. In addition, mold weakens the insects’ organisms.

To reduce the amount of moisture in the cellar, it is necessary to dry it out before leaving the apiary in it. Make a vapor barrier and provide air exchange.

In the barn

Line the inside of the room with fiberboard or chipboard to keep light out. Insulate the floor with sand, dry leaves or thick flooring. Make the insulation so that it can be removed at the right time.

During frosts, insulate the room additionally, and during a thaw, remove the thermal insulation.

Advice! Enter the bees’ winter home as rarely as possible.

Pre-wintering activities

Insulation of the hive

There should be a 50 cm layer of snow on the roof of the hive. It provides thermal insulation.

When insulating, it is necessary to cover the bottom, side walls and top of the hive with heat-insulating material. For this purpose, use foam plastic, polyurethane foam, dense polyethylene or straw, fiberboard.

If you insulate last, coat the material with drying oil. Do not insulate the hive too much, so that the bees do not get excited.

Ventilation of hives

Without ventilation of the hive, the process of gas exchange is disrupted, that is, the flow of fresh air does not enter, and carbon dioxide does not exit, resulting in the accumulation of a significant amount of steam.

Because of this, food spoils, hives rot, and bees die. Therefore, the installation of a ventilation system is an integral part of the preparatory pre-winter period.

Most often, the entrance is opened from the top and bottom, but insects plug the upper openings with propolis, which stops the flow of fresh air. But strong drafts are also undesirable, as this is dangerous for bees.

What needs to be done for balanced ventilation:

• If the upper entrance is covered with propolis, you can make small holes at the top or slightly move the boards apart. This is important, since the steam released by the cloud goes up, which then accumulates, increasing the overall humidity.
• In severe frosts, the flight holes and openings freeze, so make sure that this does not happen. The situation can be corrected by removing the ice.
• The flight holes cannot be opened completely (to avoid a strong draft), so the damper must be adjustable.

Insect treatment

After collecting honey, insert bags of formic acid into the frames. In multi-hull hives, store one bag weighing 30 grams for a week. This will protect the flying workers from mites.

Preparing food for winter

In order not to harm the bees, the food should not crystallize, so honey is selected of light varieties. Basically, this is a product taken from the main bribe, that is, a flower type.

Light honey contains a minimal amount of honeydew components, which will prevent the death of insects.

Before laying winter feed, it is necessary to check it for the amount of honeydew. This is done in 2 ways – take the honey to the laboratory or do it at home, that is, independently.

Research using lime:

1. Take honey and water in equal proportions., which should be distilled or well water, but necessarily filtered. Combine, mix thoroughly.
2. Add lime water in the same quantity as the honey solution you got.
3. Place the mixture on the fire, bring to a boil.
4. Inspect the liquid carefully. If it contains brown flakes, it means there is an excessive amount of honeydew. It is forbidden to use such honey as a supplement to insects.
5. If there is no color change or sediment, the honey is considered suitable for feeding.

Studies with wine alcohol:

1. Combine purified water and honey in equal proportions (take 1 part of each component).
2. Prepare 10 parts of wine alcohol having 96%.
3. Combine all ingredients.
4. Examine the liquid. As in the previous case, if honeydew components are present, a precipitate forms in the form of flakes, and the color changes.

If honeydew is found in honey products, all honey is destroyed.

Harmful substances penetrate into food through the bees themselves, as they bring it from the fields where they collect pollen. The reason is the treatment of crops with chemicals.

The best hives for wintering

Comparing a Dadant hive and a sunbed as a place for wintering insects, beekeepers are more inclined to the second option. Wintering of bees on sunbeds is dry. There is good ventilation in such houses. There is always little dead bees.

If you are going to use wooden hives for wintering, you will have to insulate them. A convenient option for wintering bees outside without insulation are polystyrene foam hives. There is no need to install side warm blocks and pillows in them. The material does not rot.

Foam plastic maintains a stable temperature in the houses. The air inside does not heat up or cool down, despite the fact that winter in central Russia is characterized by large temperature differences.

The furry workers, wintering in polystyrene foam houses, begin their spring flight 2 weeks earlier. The families approach the honey flow period in a strong condition.

Hives made of polystyrene need increased ventilation. Otherwise, the temperature in the house will be higher than normal. During wintering, the bees are located in a tight ball.

If the hive is warmer than it should be, the insects crawl away from each other and become more active. They spend energy faster and eat more honey to replenish it.

Firstly, the family will weaken by spring due to the heavy load on the intestines. Secondly, it makes sense to save honey.

The material does not absorb moisture, but all the water flows to the bottom. Make a hole in the bottom and leave it open until spring. The entrance should be open by 5 cm.

What and how to feed bees?

First of all, bees should receive natural honey, but if there is not enough of it or it is of poor quality, the food is replaced with other feed.

Sugar syrup

This food does not contain vitamins and microelements, but it is possible to support the vital forces of bees. In addition, it will help warm the hive.

How to cook:

1. Use enameled cookware, but not iron, to prevent oxidation.
2. Pour in 2 liters of water, boil for 5 minutes.
3. Remove from heat and add sugar in the amount of 3,5-4 kg.
4. Stir thoroughly until the sugar is completely dissolved.
5. Cool until warm.
6. Add vinegar essence (approximately 1,2-1,3 ml per 4 kg of sugar), but this is not necessary.

Feeding rules:

• For 1 hive, approximately 5 liters of syrup is needed per day.
• Feeding time is evening.
• The syrup state is warm (hot and cold are excluded).
• If the bees are fully recovered, the dosage is reduced to 300 ml.
• The hive must be well ventilated, otherwise condensation will form, leading to deterioration of the insects’ condition.

Potato syrup

By adding potato juice, you can significantly improve the composition of the syrup, saturating it with useful substances.

Method of preparation:

• peel the potatoes and wash them thoroughly;
• pass the tubers through a meat grinder or grate them on the smallest grater;
• squeeze out the juice;
• for 1 liter of sugar syrup add a maximum of 60 ml of juice;
• dilute the components only when warm.

How to feed:

• tie the container that you will place in the hive with gauze;
• pour the mixture into this glass container;
• put it in the hive;
• Make sure that the bees not only drink the juice and syrup, but also eat the starch sediment.

Dough made from sugar and honey

This recipe is used as a top dressing. It is used and prepared as follows:

• take 4 kg of granulated sugar, grind it with a blender to powder;
• put a kilogram of honey on the fire (it should become liquid and warm);
• add powdered sugar, stir;
• achieve the consistency of the dough;
• add 100 ml of water;
• make a 2 cm thick flat cake out of half a kilo of dough;
• Place the dough on the frame.

Top dressing with bee bread

There are two ways to feed with bee bread:

1 way

Bees place the bee bread on the sides of the brood, that is, on the edge of the combs. When the pollen flow is in full swing, these combs need to be removed and frames with wax foundation installed in their place.

And the bee bread elements are installed in another body, which will allow the insects to fill them with honey and seal them.

After this, take out the frames, put them in boxes, the temperature in which should be from 2 to 8 degrees. At the beginning of spring, feeding is carried out (when the bees need to gain strength).

Method 2 – preserving beebread

You need to remove the surface of the cells with a sharp knife, where there is bee bread. Then they are cut and passed through a meat grinder. Then wash the glass jars, dry thoroughly.

Place bee bread in them and pour honey over them. Roll up in the usual way. When feeding, the jars are placed in warm water so that the mass melts and becomes homogeneous.

Place 300-400 grams of the product on polyethylene, which is turned over onto the frames and left as insulation. You can repeat the feeding in 7-10 days.

Treatment of bees and hives against diseases

Bees are quite often exposed to diseases that can lead to their death during wintering. Therefore, it is important to treat the insects and hives during preparation.

This is done after the last brood has appeared and the nest has been formed. The most common diseases are nosematosis and varroatosis.

There are different methods of processing:

• Supplementary feeding with medications. That is, the appropriate medicine is added to the liquid feed (preferably sugar syrup). The bees eat it together with the food. The drug should be selected by a veterinarian, based on the suspected disease, although there are universal drugs. Fumagilin has proven effective in nosematosis, and Apimax in varroatosis.
• Smoke cannon. To do this, smoke is introduced into the hive, it is closed for 20 minutes, and then opened. The downside is that the procedure must be carried out twice. Today, there are special preparations that treat the hive thermally using a special gun. Hives can be fumigated with Folbex, Phenothiazine, Bipin.
• Liquid vapor. To do this, you need to hang a plate in the hive, onto which a liquid agent is applied beforehand. The bees touch it and spread the preparation throughout the hive, creating a chain reaction effect. Or vapors are released from the plate, which the bee absorbs through the respiratory tract. Agents: Nozemaline, oxalic acid.

Some chemicals have a negative impact on the family. Therefore, choose products based on natural components.

When do they start preparing for winter?

It is necessary to inspect the hives and begin the first preparations at the end of August – during the period when the main honey flow has ended.

If this is done in mid-to-late autumn, problems with brood may arise because the weather will be unflyable, causing the bees to settle in the nest.

If the forecast says that autumn should be warm and dry, then preparations can begin a little later, but so that the warmth is still preserved.

Useful tips from beekeepers

Every experienced beekeeper can share with a novice beekeeper his tricks and secrets, thanks to which a bee colony will successfully survive the winter.

Here are some of the recommendations:

• It is essential to insulate the hives. Various materials are used for this. Most often, to save money, beekeepers take improvised things – foam sheets (left over from household appliances), polyethylene films, polyurethane foam, old bags, warm clothes, straw and much more.
• To better retain heat in winter, all the hives are moved to each other, that is, grouped. If they are placed very close, then there will be no open walls through which the wind passes. And less insulating material will have to be used (or several hives are covered separately, or one structure, albeit large).
• Bee houses are insulated not only from the outside, but also from the inside. To do this, on both sides of the club, install insulating frames, and put warm fabric or any insulating material on top. Straw, felt mats or leaves are placed under the glue.
• The outer side is covered with suitable material. For this purpose, small nails and glue are used.
• In autumn, additional feeding is essential., thanks to which the queen will not lose her functionality, and the workers will remain active.
• If you add vinegar to sugar syrup, then strictly monitor the dosage, since an excessive amount of acid leads to underinversion of the sweet mass. As a result, sealing does not occur.
• Relative humidity in the hive there should be from 70 to 75%.
• Avoid drafts. If the apiary is located in an open space, then the hives should be insulated with materials that do not allow wind to pass through.
• Before installing the hives Dry and ventilate the areas thoroughly.
• During the autumn auditMake sure the queen is alive and ready to produce offspring. A cause for concern is the absence of brood and eggs in the combs.
• If the bees are exhausted after the last honey plant, be sure to increase your offspring.
• In a very hot autumn It is important to artificially create unfavorable weather conditions for the bees. To do this, create a draft or shade by opening the hives. Because the bees replace themselves before wintering. If this does not happen, they will remain unprepared, it will be difficult for them to survive the winter.
• Strong families are at the bottom, weak ones, as well as nuclei with additional queens – on top.
• Passage holes It is allowed to open after the members of the bee colony have completely calmed down.

Basic Errors

An experienced beekeeper has already deduced the main rules for preparing bees for winter from his own experience. However, novice beekeepers may not take into account some circumstance that will cost the life of the bee family.

Their main mistakes are:

• Pumping out all the honey. The family cannot fully develop on syrup alone. Honey is especially needed in the spring, when the first brood hatches;
• Overfeeding with syrup. This circumstance follows from the first mistake. In an effort to compensate for the lack of food, the bees intensively process the syrup, which leads to their exhaustion;
• Untidy feeding. Syrup spilled around and on the hive provokes theft and even bee warfare, in which many bees die;
• Late feedingIf the reserves have already been made, the young bees are preparing for winter, then feeding only depletes their fat body, and they go into winter weakened;
• Lack of bee bread. When the spring brood emerges, there will be nothing to feed it with;
• Leaving the light cells. Brood was not hatched in such combs, and they do not retain heat well. Bees freeze on such combs and consume a lot of food;
• Early insulation. May cause improper cluster formation, resulting in bees freezing;
• Incorrect position of the hiveThe bee house should be tilted slightly forward to prevent moisture from flowing into the entrance and dampness from forming inside.

Conclusion

To summarize everything written above:

1. All winged workers must fly around. It is advisable to do this as late as possible. Then the bees will not defecate in the hive during the winter.
2. Provide the bees with the necessary conditions for wintering: low humidity, outside air temperature (approximately 5 degrees above zero), no noise and light.
3. Check insects for diseases.
4. In August, look at the brood of the families. If it is small, then you need to add frames with a sufficient number of eggs to the hives.
5. Do not feed honey producers unnecessarily in winter.