Winterizing: Maintaining Bee Hives Over Winter

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Winterizing bee hives, and maintaing those beehives over winter, is a neccesary task of the beekeeper. This is especially the case with new hives in which the colony did not have time to build up adequate honey stores for themselves.

Overwintering preparations begin well before the onset of winter. Before those days come of which the beekeeper will say, I take no pleasure in them... While there is still warm late summer weather, the bees must be fed enough 2:1 sugar syrup (never honey) to get through the winter and to sustain spring buildup (brood rearing). Depending on your location, this can mean one and a half or even two shallow supers (6 5/8) of solid capped honey/syrup.

If possible, do not feed the bees so much so fast that they fill most of the brood combs with syrup. Adequate empty cells in the brood nest are helpful to healthy overwintering, not to mention necessary for continuing brood rearing (until the bees decide to stop for the year). Once you are done feeding for the winter, you may have to give a couple empty combs to the brood nest. Stimulative feeding (for brood rearing and foundation drawing) can be resumed, using 1:2 (or maybe 1:1) syrup. Again, do not give so much that the bees flood the brood combs with it; but do give enough so that the bees don't have to dip into their winter stores to sustain brood rearing. When pollen becomes no longer available in sufficient quantities, stop the stimulative feeding (or if you're feeling ambitious, you can try experimenting with giving the bees pollen substitute).

Just before you stop feeding, give the proper dose of Fumadil B to avoid winter dysentery. At the end of the stimulative feeding, medicate the bees with 2:1 syrup containing Fumidil-B.

On a nice day late in the fall you will have to go through the hive and possibly re-arrange the frames so that the winter stores are above, and to some extent to the sides of, the brood nest (that is, what had been the brood nest; most brood rearing should have ceased by this time). Any empty combs should be below the brood nest. Be sure to install a mouse guard/entrance reducer in the bottom entrance.

Bees generate humidity, and in the cold weather this moisture rises. It must be vented from the top of the hive, so be sure there is an upper entrance. It need be only the size of a nickel. If you use a migratory cover (basically a piece of painted plywood, held in place with a brick or two) you can cut a 3/4” wide grove, 3/8” high, in the middle of one side;  this will let the moisture out. If you have no upper entrance, the moisture will condense inside the hive and drip back onto the bees, chilling them -- not a good situation.

It sometimes happens that bees run low on available honey/syrup during the winter, or even during the spring (when demand for stores is highest due to brood rearing). I stress “available”, because even if there are ample stores in the hive, unless those stores are immediately above the bees’ cluster, the bees can and will starve to death in cold weather. So make sure the stores are positioned properly.

If stores get low, perhaps the best thing to do is to take some empty combs and spray 2:1 syrup into them. Be sure to use a clean sprayer without foreign residue form other uses. You might have to remove the spray tip and go with a single stream of syrup, and keep waving it across the surface of the combs. Giving these to the bees will stimulate flying, so if possible give them to the bees on a nice flying day. If that is not possible, give them (as quickly as possible) on a cold day just before it gets dark, to minimize flying attempts. And next year you can join the ranks of all the other beekeepers who resolve to always give their bees enough stores before winter so you and the bees won’t ever again have to go through all this nonsense.

For ongoing management, see Beginning Beekeeping: Managing Small Hives.

Return to Honey Bees Guide home.

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