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Off the Wahl Beekeeping
New(ish) Beekeeper Column
Fall: Getting Ready for Winter
By: Richard Wahl
Changing Weather
As the leaves begin to change colors here in southeast Michigan and the days become cooler, there are actions that can be taken to ensure your hives are ready to survive our variable Winters. Although the timing may vary depending on your particular climate area or the weather patterns that may differ from year to year, the techniques I will describe that follow will at some point in time apply to nearly all beekeepers. A little preparation and forethought can go a long way in determining the success of your hives when the following Spring arrives.
Adequate Honey Stores
The bees have been busy all summer and Fall, gathering nectar that they have turned into honey in order for them to survive the following Winter. It is to our benefit that they are somewhat altruistic and store more honey than what they will need to use themselves. We humans have therefore taken advantage of this trait and collect what we hope is not in excess of their needs. The minimum amount of stored honey recommended for the bees is in the sixty to eighty pound range. The amount of honey to be left for the bees will depend on the colony strength and the size of the hive. A double ten frame deep full of bees will require more than a single deep or a five frame nuc. A full deep frame of capped honey will weigh on average around eight pounds. A double ten frame deep full with bees should weigh closer to the upper end of 80 pounds or a bit more. This means the entire top deep should be nearly filled with capped honey or a combination of about ten to twelve total frames from both deeps covered with honey. As August days change to September and then into October the queen is given less and less space in the brood rearing area for eggs as more and more of the space is used to store the winter honey supply. A single deep may only need the sixty pound amount which means at least seven frames fully covered in honey are present. A five frame nuc may get by with thirty to forty pounds but I like my five frame nucs to be at least a double story deep which takes us to the same amount as a ten frame deep. If in a late August through early October hive check amounts do not seem to be approaching these levels due to a dearth or weather precluding a strong Fall nectar flow, feeding is strongly recommended. A two parts sugar dissolved in one part water sugar syrup mix should be fed to the bees until nighttime temperatures continually fall below zero. The two to one ratio gives the bees less water to extract and the higher carbohydrate content allows the Winter bees to fatten up for the colder temperatures soon to arrive. This sugar syrup mix is particularly a good idea if the beekeeper has lighter deeps with most of the honey having been taken from upper level honey supers. As the bees fill the previous brood cells with honey, they should be fed as much syrup as they will take. The stored honey serves as insulation surrounding the ever smaller brood nest area where the queen will initially reside. Leaving sufficient honey stores for the bees is the best insurance against possible early Spring starvation.
A beautifully capped frame of honey
Queen Excluders and Honey Super Cleanout
If you use queen excluders with a honey super that will remain over the deep through Winter, the queen excluder needs to have been removed by this time. If the cluster of bees moves up the queen must also be able to move up to be kept warm by the cluster. Occasionally I will leave a filled honey super over a single heavily populated deep so as to leave an adequate amount of food stores for that deep over the Winter. By this point in time any honey supers that are intended to be removed should have had the honey extracted. If you do not use queen excluders there are often a few cells along the bottom of the honey super frames that have had eggs laid in them and may have capped brood. When extracting, I do not remove the caps from those brood and I spin out the uncapped honey cells in my motorized extractor at full speed. The capped brood does not get thrown out of their capped cells to mix with the honey.
If your hives have been visited by hive beetles it is important to extract the honey within three days of honey super removal so that any hive beetles that may have laid eggs in the honey super do not turn into larva. In three days hive beetle eggs turn into larva that will chew though comb and honey and leave a trail of beetle excrement behind which destroys the quality of the honey making it unusable. Once I have extracted the honey I will place the honey super back on a hive over the inner cover and under the outer cover. In this manner only the bees in the hive can go up through the inner cover hole and get to the honey super for cleanup which decreases other hives urge to start a robbing event. This also keeps visiting wasps and yellow jackets from getting to the empty super. This works best if the honey super is returned to a different hive other than the one it was originally taken from. It seems the different remaining pheromone encourages the bees that are cleaning out the super to have less of a tendency to store more nectar in the returned super. The bees will clean out and remove any remaining capped brood if the honey super is returned to the top of a hive for a refill. I like to retire the cleaned out honey supers into an old chest freezer for 48 hours to kill any beetle or wax moth eggs that might remain. For storage one can stack three or four honey supers with a paper pie plate holding Para moth crystals on top of the supers followed by three or four more supers with another paper pie plate with Para moth crystals. The crystal vapor descends down through the honey super below to keep moths out. Do not use regular naphthalene moth balls or crystals normally used in clothes closets as the naphthalene will also kill your bees if used on any supers that are returned to the hive. Once my honey supers are emptied, cleaned out and frozen for a day or two, I place each in a 30 gallon garbage bag and stack them in an unheated out building. As long as there are no rips or holes in the garbage bags I have not had any problems with wax moths. I do use a few paper cups with the naphthalene moth balls set around the outside of the bagged honey supers which seems to keep any curious moths away from the bagged supers.
A fall hive inspection accomplishing three things at once: showing plenty of bees in the hive, full frames of capped honey and a mite check with no mites.
Fall Hive Inspections
Full Fall hive inspections should only be made when the temperature will remain above 50°F (10°C) for a period of time during and after the inspection. In addition to determining the need to feed your bees it will be a good time to do a mite check. If counts in the Fall exceed three percent, it is time to apply a mite treatment. Try to get mite counts as low as possible before going into the Winter months. Since the queen is beginning to lay fewer eggs with less brood present it is a good time to consider an oxalic dribble or oxalic vapor treatment. Temperatures remaining above 40°F (4.5°C) the night following a daytime dribble are ideal to allow the bees enough time to clean themselves off and not get chilled that following eve. The earlier in the day a dribble can be done the better. The oxalic treatments do not penetrate capped brood so if temperatures allow there are other treatments that can be used. I like the Formic Pro since the formic has been found to penetrate the capped brood cells to some extent and can be used with honey supers on. The greatest reason for bee hive losses in the Spring is an over-abundance of mites present in the Fall and through the Winter. Mites can survive on adult bees for up to three months. Mites are out-producing the bees by a more than three to one ratio in the Fall months. As soon as the queen starts laying a few eggs in the Spring, perhaps as early as January, the mites can sense when a larva is to be capped and will crawl into that cell to live off the capped pupa and reproduce. Research has found that a single mite living off the body fat of a bee can decrease that bee’s life by twenty five to thirty percent. If the bee is carrying two mites it can cut the bee’s life by fifty percent. And that does not take into account the forty or so viruses or diseases the mite could possibly be passing on to the bee. At the time of the inspection it is good to see a nice brood pattern although much smaller than that seen in Summer. These are the bees that will emerge to survive for as much as four to six months and provide for the care of the new Spring eggs, brood and emerging bees. In the event a hive seems weak or has lost their queen with no evidence of eggs or small larva, the hive can be married to another. Although I do not like to pinch off a queen, it is sometimes the better choice than letting a hive struggle to get through the Winter with a weak performing queen. A sheet of newspaper placed between the bottom deep that has a good queen and the top deep with no queen will allow the top deep queenless bees to get used to their new queen’s pheromone as they chew through the paper. Any bits of the scrap paper fuzz that falls to the bottom board should be removed a week or so after the marriage to preclude a moisture buildup in any of the fallen refuse paper. You’ll notice with cooler temperatures, the blooms of goldenrod and purple asters quickly start to diminish. This is the sign to evaluate hives and combine where necessary or shakedown colonies that have too much empty space. Weak hives should be combined with stronger hives. If two weak colonies are combined you simple end up with one larger weak colony; it is not recommended to combine two weak hives together.
A two deep, four frames queenless nuc added to a strong existing hive.
Robbing
Leaving a hive open or a honey super exposed for any length of time in the Fall is a sure invitation for robbing. The late Summer and Fall may have a short supply of nectar producing flowers or be in a dearth. Since bees are continually on the lookout for new nectar or honey sources, an exposed honey super or open hive is very tempting for robbing. Whether using a fumigant, a hive escape board, a leaf blower or simply brushing bees off frames of honey to be taken, it is a good idea to place them in an extra empty super that is set on a flat board or extra outer cover. As soon as the frame or entire honey super is placed on the flat moveable surface cover it with another outer cover. In this way the honey is not exposed to investigating bees and it is unlikely a robbing frenzy will be started. Likewise, any open hive should have as much of the exposed frames covered with a white sheet or inverted extra outer cover to avoid any chance of starting robbing. Work in your hives quickly but carefully when removing honey frames or full honey supers. Nearby hives that are of the same relative strength that are queenright provide less of a chance for a robbing event. If robbing does start it may only take a day or two for the weak hive to lose out and you will more than likely be unable to recover it at that point. I keep my entrance reducers on all my hives through the late Summer through the Winter with the smallest entrance on any nucs or hives that I suspect are a bit weaker. Hive reducers also make it more difficult for mice or voles to get into a hive unless they are very small and courageous. If a hive is found to be mostly empty of bees and honey, a robbery has already occurred. A telltale sign of this is wax capping detritus on the bottom board as robbing bees merely rip open capped honey cells, engorge their honey stomachs and return to their hives with their bounty. If robbing has already taken place, there will be an abnormal amount of dead bees inside or just outside of the hive. If there is any question about a robbing potential, the use of robbing screens is also advised.
Moisture Control
Although moisture control is not normally a concern in the Fall, preparations can be made now for when it may become a problem during Winter. Bees can tolerate very cold temperatures as long as the cold condensation moisture is not allowed to drip back on them. Bees exhale warm air that results in water vapor seen as a fog the same as humans exhaling in cold temperatures. In a cluster that warm air turning into moisture and falling back on them can cause them to freeze. The key is to be sure the hive can adequately ventilate. The small notch on the front edge of the inner cover is normally recommended to be down during the Winter. This provides for fanning bees to maintain ventilation and also provides a second entrance/exit point if the lower entrance gets blocked by snow.
When I began using a half or one inch piece of foam insulation board cut to just fit inside the outer cover on my hives over the Winter months, I noticed a much better rate of survival. Just that small bit of insulation in the outer cover seemed to allow the bees to more easily control humidity and moisture content in each hive. Cut pieces out of a four by eight foot sheet and have them ready to install when temperatures continually go below freezing at night. For my purposes I leave these foam sheets on year round. I find they are just as good during hot Summers mitigating the hot sun shining on the metal outer cover sheath and emanating through the thin outer cover usually made of wood. This seems to cut down on the Summer bearding on hot days as well. In addition to the outer cover insulation, a Vivaldi style spacer can be placed over the inner cover, as explained in last month’s article.
One inch insulation slips into the outer cover.
Conclusion
As the days of Fall change to cooler and shorter the bees are accommodating those changes by using more brood space to store honey, raising fattened bees to survive the Winter, and trying to find as many last minute resources to store as possible. If we as beekeepers help to assist in this annual transition the survival of the hive becomes more likely through the coming cold Winter months. There is no greater pleasure than coming into that first Spring inspection to find a strong healthy hive with an excellent queen ready to bring in more honey in the coming season.
Richard Wahl began learning beekeeping the hard way starting in 2010 with no mentor or club association and a swarm catch. He is now a self-sustainable hobby beekeeper since 2018, writing articles, giving lectures and teaching beginning honey bee husbandry and hive management.
