New(ish) Beekeeper Column
Winter Projects
Richard Wahl
As we ease into the Winter months here in SE Michigan, the bees are tucked away for the Winter, perhaps with a bit of insulation on the hives and thoughts of adding additional food stores as we get past the holiday season. Until the temperatures continuously remain below freezing at night, a two parts to one part sugar syrup (sugar to water by volume) can be fed to the bees if hives seem a bit light on honey stores. I find that when using queen excluders the bees tended to backfill brood supers with the Fall nectar flow a bit faster than when there is no excluder and there is easier access to a honey super above. Whether or not one feeds syrup in the Fall is up to the beekeeper. During some Falls, I have fed no hives while during others I have only fed syrup to those hives that seemed light. Lifting a hive in the back and getting a feel for the heft of the hive goes a long way in my decision whether or not the hive needs to be fed. In either event, I do make it a practice to put additional granulated sugar on top of the hive supers around the Christmas holidays or later, on one of those mild Winter days. Since the bees need to dissolve the sugar in order to ingest it, there is a greater likelihood of dysentery in the hive if granulated sugar is added too early in the Fall and the bees are relying on it as their primary food source. Honey bee dysentery is caused by a diet high in solids and can become particularly noticeable when the bees cannot get out for cleansing flights during the Winter. But, it is still better to have a spare food source in the hive for bees to rely on it if their own honey stores are exhausted. They may also use it if they have moved upward in the hive, even if stores were still available at a lower location. In either event, we hope for those every three to four week warmer days when the bees can get out on cleansing flights and we might quickly peek in the hive to see if additional food stores are needed.
Aside from that, there are numerous other tasks that can be accomplished over the Winter months to remove some of the preparation and lighten the load as the next Spring and Summer season gets underway.
Moving Hives
Fall or early Winter is a great time to move a hive with the only drawback being that it is a bit heavier. An old adage in beekeeping states that you can move a hive a few feet or a distance exceeding three miles without bees becoming disoriented. When bees become foragers, they take a few orientation flights before leaving the hive area and come back to that same location. Theory states that if a hive is moved a distance less than three miles but a bit more than three feet, bees will return to the same original missing hive area and become lost. An example of this is a suburban friend of mine had a swarm move into an overhanging eave. At the time I did not have vacuum equipment to remove them. He found another beekeeper with a vacuum system, captured most of the bees and hived them to take away. Unfortunately, not thinking this through, the beekeeper lived a mile or so away from my friend’s home and the next morning all the bees returned into the eave of my friend’s house. With a second try, the captured hive was moved about twenty miles away and remained at their new location.
Early in my beekeeping years, I was not able to move a hived swarm immediately, so I carefully placed the hive on a two wheel dolly and moved it a few feet closer to my hive area every other day or so for about a month, letting the bees orient to the few feet of move each time. It worked, but was a tedious process. Several years ago, I used an easier method. If time constraints require me to leave a swarm hive at the catch location, I leave it there raised eight to 12 inches off the ground on a few cement blocks until a few cold Fall or warm early Winter days are forecast. Knowing the bees will not be out and about during those days, when I am ready to move it, I screen off the lower entrance and inner cover hole and cover any upper front entrance with a piece of duct tape. I place straps around the hive to keep it stable. I then slide the hive onto one of those low green garden center four wheel product purchase pull wagons and pull it to the new location where I can slide it onto the new stand on cement blocks.
Bees will not normally be out during those colder late Fall days so I leave the entrance screening in place for a day or two before removing it. Since bees are no longer in a foraging mode, they seem to orient to the new location for cleansing flights with no noticeable loss of bees returning to the swarm capture location even if nearby.
Paint and Repair Equipment
One obvious chore is to paint and repair any supers that are not being used or purchased new and planned for next season’s use. I often find the upper narrower brood super ridge bar outside the place where the frames rest is splayed out a bit and needs to be reseated and glued or nailed. I try to remove those supers that need the most repair when I am doing splits in the Spring. They often sit waiting through the busier Summer season. New hives will keep much longer if a good coat of primer and paint is applied. Use a water based paint, since oil based often continue to give off fumes that we can’t smell, but research shows bees are a bit less tolerant of. Although you see most beehives in white, if you have other colors, they work just fine. Research has shown bees are more partial to the typical flower shades of yellow, purple and blue.
My nucs are this variety of colors and all my newly mated queens normally find their way back to their own nuc to start laying eggs without fail, even though nucs were set side by side. Since only the outside of the super gets painted, there are ways to enhance the inside. Some beekeepers suggest roughing the inside with any kind of abrasive that will leave small gouges or a non-sanded roughness. In theory, the bees fill in the rougher spots with propolis which serves an immunomodulatory effect in the hive. It has been stated, bees that produce a heavier propolis coating on frames and super parts have a greater tendency to fight off any microbial viruses or diseases that get in the hive. Personally, I have never bothered with this inside step, but do often find deposits of propolis on the inner surfaces of many supers.
Remove Propolis From Honey Supers
Frames removed from honey supers for extraction usually have a build-up of propolis on the top outer edges of the frames where they sit on the super. Once I have extracted the honey, I scrape the excess burr comb wax and propolis off the tops and bottoms of frames. Before or after the scraping off of propolis, I place the honey supers with frames for a night or two in a chest freezer which kills off any wax moth or hive beetle eggs if they were present. I also scrape the super’s notch where frames sit to clean off that propolis. This makes spacing of the frames much easier when it comes time to use them next year.
The propolis can be processed and used in various balms, ointments or tinctures with a variety of recipes found on the internet. Caution is advised if preparing any of these for personal use to be sure there are no allergic reactions or potentially negative effects. In addition to the frames and super notches, propolis can be collected from queen excluders if they are used. If they are plastic excluders, you can put them in the freezer overnight and then flex them gently as most of the propolis will be released. If they are metal excluders, scraping them with a hive tool works well after they have spent a night in the freezer. Some beekeepers will also use a heat gun on metal excluders to remove excess comb, although it takes a bit more heat to remove propolis. For obvious reasons, a heat gun is not a good idea on a plastic queen excluder. In addition to propolis, much more value added hive product information can be found in the Food and Agricultural (FAO) Services Bulletin No. 124 found at the website: www.fao.org/docrep/w0076e/w0076e00.htm
Clean Tools
Cleaning hive tools can be a bit of a challenge if there is a build-up of propolis or wax. I find that boiling water poured on the hive implement will remove most of the propolis and wax. If the propolis is older from years past, it may take several boiling water washes to get most of it off hive tools. Using a blow torch on a low setting to heat metal hive tools followed by a wipe with a clean rag will also remove propolis and wax. Care needs to be taken – wear thick gloves while handling any heated hive tool so as not to get a nasty skin burn. I find that running boiling water over my metal honey filtration screens removes the bits of wax and debris that remains in the screen. It may take two or three boiling water pours to get all the wax off the filtration screens. I also use boiling water to rinse out my metal honey centrifuge extractor before storing it for the Winter. I would not suggest using a blow torch on the metal filtration screens as they are more fragile than hive tools and may rust or disintegrate.
Several years ago, I was invited to teach a beginner class and wanted to display some of the common tools that beekeepers use. My smoker had not been cleaned since purchase and had quite a build-up of creosote from the wood chips I was using as fuel. I needed a way to clean it and preparing for the class provided the impetus to do so. After scraping as much creosote out with a hive tool and an old kitchen steak knife as I could, I soaked the smoker metal part in a mix of one cup distilled white vinegar to one gallon of water overnight (do not get the baffle wet for obvious reasons). The next day a stiff brush and bit of steel wool was used to clean the remaining soot off to almost make the smoker look like new. Always use a heavy pair of rubber gloves to save the hands when doing any type of cleaning work.
Bleach Moldy Woodenware
When I first started my beekeeping experience thirteen years ago, I was just using the standard Langstroth hive and overwintering with two deeps and the inner and outer covers with no additional insulation or Vivaldi boards. Over the course of a few years, I ended up with quite a bit of mold and discoloration on the inside of outer covers, some frame tops and inner super sides where moisture had built up. This was especially prevalent if a moisture laden cover, frame or super were set in storage for a period of time. After removing the plastic foundation from the frames, I placed the frames in a ten percent bleach water solution and let them soak for about thirty minutes. About five frames will fit in a half filled five gallon bucket reversing the submerged ends for another thirty minutes. In most cases the woodenware comes out looking almost like new. Let the soaked parts dry out well in a sunny location before reuse or storage. The larger outer covers or supers can be submerged one side at a time in one of those large plastic totes sold at big box stores.
Render Wax
I covered my suggested techniques and cautions about wax renderings in a previous month’s issue, so I will not repeat those ideas here. Suffice it to say that the Winter months are a great time to render wax. I am fortunate to have an enclosed out building that has power and can keep the entire process out of the house since the wax filtered debris and splatters are not endearing to the wife’s kitchen.
Store or Recondition Old Comb Foundation
I find that most new beekeepers are of the frugal nature and like to reuse as much of their previously purchased equipment as possible, particularly if only maintaining one or two hives. If wax moths have gotten into the foundation comb it can be a real chore to clean up. One way to avoid this is to stack three to four supers with drawn comb and set a paper pie plate on top with a few para-moth crystals on the plate. It is important to use para-moth (paradichlorobenzene) crystals sold by most of the bee product catalogs rather than standard moth balls (naphthalene) as the naphthalene will also kill the bees. If there are more than three to four supers, continue to stack them over the previous one with the para-moth paper plate and add a second plate over the next few. When I first started beekeeping, I found that if I placed the empty honey super in a chest freezer overnight it killed any wax moth or hive beetle eggs. I then stored the supers in a large plastic garbage bag tucked tightly around the super and frames.
These sat in an unheated out building through the Winter and Spring with no moth crystals of either type. Only once did I have wax moths get into a bag, most likely as I had been careless and skipped the freezer step. Thereafter, I set a few plastic cups with moth balls (naphthalene) near, but outside my garbage bag wrapped supers. I have had no further wax moth problems while not using the para-moth crystals.
After a few years, the comb in the brood foundation gets very dark and brittle. It is a good idea to replace some of the oldest brood comb every year, once past the four to five year use point, since it has accumulated medication and pesticide residue as well as the thin papery cocoons used by multiple generations of new bee pupae. If the comb has been built on plastic foundation, the foundation can be cleaned and reused. The very thin cocoon around each larva, after brood cell capping, does build up making each brood cell just micro-millimeters smaller after each use. Above 80°F (a bit warmer is better), a scraper will peel nearly all of the wax cell and old cocoon residue away.
What doesn’t come off can be removed with a good power washer. Remove the foundation from the frames before power washing. Keep the power washer nozzle nearly touching the foundation on a flat surface and most of the cell residue will be removed as well as any old pollen build up in cells. Let the foundation completely dry, pop back into the frames and re-wax the foundation. I use a 1750 psi power washer which works fine, but I think a bit stronger psi would work even better. Each of my frames gets a permanent marker number (year’s last digit) on top to indicate the first year of use. That way I know when the frame is older than four to five years. The foundation can then be coated with melted beeswax using a foam brush. The bees are more likely to draw out comb on pre-waxed foundation.
Hopefully using any of these suggestions can help you be better prepared for next season’s beekeeping. Additionally there are plenty of tips on the internet for any of the foregoing topics with often more unique or creative methods. These are simply things that I have found work well for me. Your equipment cleaning results could vary based on your conditions, environment, experience or state of your hive tools. Happy new bee keeping year.
