Preparing Honeybee Colonies For Winter

Preparing Honeybee Colonies for Winter: Strategies for Success

• Understanding the Role of Beekeepers and Bees in Preparation
• Key Steps Beekeepers Can Take to Ready Hives for Winter
• Monitoring and Managing Hive Health
• Insulating and Ventilating Hives for Optimal Winter Conditions
• How Honeybees Adapt and Prepare Themselves for Winter
• Ensuring Adequate Food Stores and Managing Resources
• Recognizing Signs of Stress or Illness in Winter Bees
• Case Studies: Successful Winter Preparations from Experienced Beekeepers

At the time of the original writing and sharing of this Snippet (early September), it seems nearly impossible that we should even be thinking about the winter months yet. It’s not even officially fall!

But for beekeepers, planning ahead is an integral part of being successful. It can make all the difference in the health of your colonies, especially when it comes to honeybees being able to survive the cold winter months.

We might not want to be thinking about winter yet, but as far as our honeybees go, they’ve been busy preparing for it for months now!

Read on to find out more about how you can work together with your bees to help them be as ready as possible to successfully overwinter. Please also note that the guidance in this Snippet is a frame of reference and may not entirely apply to beekeepers in warmer climates.

Winter Bees

Have you ever heard of a ‘winter bee’ or a ‘fat bee’? No, it’s not simply a larger honeybee that’s clustered up in their hive during the winter months, it’s actually a bee that lives much longer than a honeybee’s typical 6-week lifespan. ‘Winter bees’ are chock full of a compound called “vitellogenin” that helps bees store food reserves in their body. This compound and the additional fat stores make for bigger, heartier bees – more capable of tolerating and surviving the cold winter months.

The production of “winter bees” in a honeybee colony happens throughout the fall months. As regular brood production decreases, (more bees mean more warmth, but also more mouths to feed) the bees that do emerge will be the stronger, heartier “winter bees”

Through the winter, all honeybees in the hive will cluster themselves tightly into a ball, staying together when it’s cold to keep warm and moving throughout the hive (within the cluster) to their much-needed food sources. “Winter bees” are an extremely important part of this process and ensuring your hive is strong enough to produce them in the fall can make a big difference in their chance to successfully overwinter.

Helping Bees to Produce “Winter Bees”

To help be certain that your colony will be strong enough to produce healthy winter bees, there are a few things to keep an eye on:

• Ensure you have a productive, well-laying queen. (If you don’t, re-queening may be possible, but keep in mind that if you re-queen too late in the season, they may not have enough time to rear enough winter bees to successfully overwinter.)
• Make sure to keep at least 6-8 frames open in the brood nest to be dedicated to egg-laying and brood production.
• Have ample food available for the brood close to brood frames, ensuring a variety of nectar and pollen are available.
• To successfully produce healthy brood, the colony should be free of diseases and pests.
• • Keep varroa mite levels under control (below 3% threshold or 9 mites/300 bees), and apply treatment if you find mite levels above the treatment threshold.

Check out our Snippet covering the fascinating “Winter Bee” here.

Other Ways to Help Bees Prepare for the Winter Months

Yes, the production of ‘winter bees’ is an integral part of what honeybees do to prepare for the winter months, but producing stronger bees is just the start.

Honeybees start preparing for winter much sooner than we do, in fact, basically their whole season is spent building up the population and resources needed to ensure success going forward and through the winter months.

In addition to helping bees to produce the winter bees needed to help keep the cluster warm, a beekeeper should consider some other hive criteria and tasks as just as important.

Read on to find out more about what’s important to consider ahead of the winter months.

Colony Health

If your colony is going into the fall months with any sort of diseases or pests affecting them, they already have a decreased chance of survival. When completing inspections in the fall months, look for signs of diseases and pest infestation, especially that of Varroa mites.

Address any disease or pest issues as soon as possible before the cold weather sets in, and especially before that last push of fall brood production, if possible.

Learn more about the dreaded Varroa mite itself, how they impact our bees, and testing and treating for mites in our Snippet series on Varroa mites here (and don’t forget to head to the “learn more” section at the end to see ALL our Varroa snippets and articles).

Food Stores & Feeding

In order to successfully overwinter, a honeybee colony must have enough honey and pollen stores to sustain them through the winter months. Generally, most hives should have at least 60-80 lbs. of honey in the entire hive and between 1-2 frames full of pollen stores per brood box.

If honey or pollen stores are insufficient, you may need to add supplemental feed to help them make it through until resources are available again.

Fall Feeding

If you’re feeding your bees in the fall months, heavy sugar syrup is a great option. Use a hive top feeder or in-hive feeder (linked below) and make a heavy 2:1 sugar syrup with a ratio of 2 parts sugar for 1 part water.

Emergency Supplemental Feeding in Winter

Even when feeding heavy sugar syrup in the fall months, it may still not be enough for bees to successfully sustain the bees inside. In the winter months, honey is typically stored at the top of the hive. You may be able to tell that bees have eaten through their honey stores if they have moved up in the hive to access all food stores available.

If they’ve moved through all their food stores, be prepared to add an emergency feed like our winter patties or a homemade sugar or fondant/brick.

Learn more about what to feed bees here and find some recipes for making your own syrup or fondant, too. Don’t forget to check out the “Learn More” section and links below for even more articles on how and when to feed honeybees.

Colony Size

Now’s the time to master assessing the size of your colony – your decisions on how to treat the colonies and your hive equipment setup will depend totally on the size of the colony (FOB & # of brood frames), not your hive equipment itself.

Knowing FOB inside your hive, AND the number of brood frames and prospective new bees, can help you to make better decisions on how much food stores are needed and how best to configure the hive.

Hive Configuration

Toward the end of the fall months as brood production is slowing or stopping, you may notice honeybees ‘backfilling’ frames. This is where they take honey from the uppermost boxes/supers and move it down into the now-empty brood nest.

Backfilling frames allows bees to place honey where they need it, where it’s more accessible to them inside their cluster. (As mentioned above, wherever they decide to store it, a honeybee hive should have 60-80 lbs. of honey to sustain the colony through the cold months.)

If bees have removed honey from the supers on top of your hive and they are now empty, it’s a good practice to remove those now-empty supers. The additional space means more area for bees to attempt to keep warm. Condensing the hive and ensuring the boxes and frames that remain are necessary can go a long way in helping your bees. (When any frames are removed and have comb remaining, take great care to store them properly or you risk wax moths ruining all your bees’ hard work!)

Maintaining the proper temperature and moisture inside the wooden box that is their beehive through the winter can be difficult, but bees are pretty remarkable. With the proper hive setup and help from their keeper, they can make it happen.

Ensure hive entrances are reduced and add mouse guards if needed. Mice will sneak in if they can, they love nothing more than the warmth and sweet honey inside a beehive in the winter!

To help make it easier for them to maintain the proper temperature and moisture levels, consider adding a quilt box or insulating hive wrap to your honeybee hive. Check out our “Learn More” section below for the products you need to help get your bees through the winter.

The Importance of Taking Good Notes

The fall months are a beekeeper’s last chance to really inspect and understand what’s happening inside their hives and to make changes before the cold sets in. Honeybees start to cluster at around 50 degrees F, so bees may already be clustered up in some places!

As we often mention, taking good notes and keeping good beehive records is critical to having a successful colony. When it comes to preparing colonies to overwinter, taking notes can be a huge help in making you feel secure about their health and well-being.

The fall months are a beekeeper’s last chance to really inspect and understand what’s happening inside their hives and to make changes before it’s too cold to open the hive. Honeybees start to cluster at around 50 degrees F, so bees may already be clustered up in some places!

As we often mention, taking good notes and keeping good beehive records is critical to having a successful colony. When it comes to preparing colonies to overwinter, taking notes can be a huge help in making you feel secure about their health and well-being.

Monitoring Hives Through the Winter Months

Being a beekeeper through the winter months can be pretty frustrating. Though it takes a lot of patience to be a beekeeper in general, not being able to actually check in on your hives can be quite excruciating. We love and care for our bees all season, but through the winter months we worry that they’re doing well and surviving in their cluster.

One way to keep an eye on your honeybees when you can’t open the hive is to have data sent to you, giving you the opportunity to check on them and monitor their data from inside. Purchasing a hive monitor can give you the chance to do that.

Hive monitors use the latest technology to keep track of things like weight, temperature, and humidity levels inside your hives. This information can give you a much better idea of what’s happening inside and makes it much easier to know that it’s time to intervene. Learn more about using hive monitors in our article here.

Learn More

We’ve put together some of our free learning resources below, as well as some products (available in the PerfectBee Store) that you may want to consider picking up before the cold weather arrives.

• The Beekeeper’s Role in Avoiding Colony Starvation – It’s important for a beekeeper to know how many food stores their colony should have, as well as when and how to intervene when needed. Starvation is one of the leading causes of colony death during the winter months, so it can really help to learn through this article about avoiding colony starvation.
• Winter Bees & Fall Honeybee Populations – This PerfectBee Snippet covers the “winter bee” and all its glory in detail and gives you some things to consider about the rise and fall of bee populations as the weather grows colder.
• A New Beekeeper’s Journal – A Fall Checklist – This blog post details what to consider in the fall and gives you an idea of tasks you might want to be completing.
• A New Beekeeper’s Journal – Cooler Weather and the Beekeeper – More on what to consider as the cold weather begins and what you should be doing in your bee yard.
• Mite Treatments and Winter Hive Activity – Find out more in this blog post about winter hive activity and completing mite treatments in the colder months.
• Winterizing Beehives – There are plenty of ways a beekeeper can help their colonies be ready for the cold of winter. Find out more about what you can do to your hive setup to help keep bees more comfortable in the cold.
• Winter or Pollen Patties? – Winter patties are a great (and easy) way to add supplemental feed to your colonies, but why is that? Find out more in this blog that goes into more detail on when you’d choose winter patties or pollen patties.
• Beehive Insulation for the Winter – Though a beehive is meant to mimic a natural beehive environment (typically a tree trunk), the thickness of hive bodies isn’t always enough to successfully prevent hives from getting too cold or drafty. Learn more about insulating hives in this post.

Free Printable Resources

Our Collaborator, Marta, used her years of beekeeping experience to create some amazingly helpful printable resources that you can use in your beehives to plan ahead and keep track of colony statistics and details.

Please note, that the timelines in these resources are geared toward the Northeastern US. Times may need to be adjusted based on where you keep your bees!  

• Beehive Inspection Checklist – Use this checklist to learn more about what you should be seeing in your hives as well as what you actually ARE seeing! Keeping good beehive records, especially during the fall months, can be integral to your colonies’ succes
• New England Beekeeping Calendar – Though this resource is geared toward New England, the facts and features can be useful to beekeepers anywhere. Plus, it gives you the perfect place to make note of what’s happening in your hives and when and look back at when making future beekeeping decisions.

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