Heating hives over winter

[Finman]

When Craibstone tried to over winter super sized hives they failed. As in three normal colonies made up into one unit, it just plain did not work and the reason they came up with was over heating and over consumption of stores, death by nosema and starvation.

Bees know perfectly well how to over winter, it is up to us to assist not thwart them.

PH

of course, if the beekeeper's intelligent is under the bees' brain, catastrophe is ready, what ever he does.

It is not difficult to see what extra heating makes to the bee cluster.

However, I have got splended results with heating. At first it took a while that I got proper wats to the hive. Last winter was hard. 3 W had nothing influence to clusters. 6 W was good and and small clusters collected themselves on side of heaters.

Last winter it was here several weeks -30C and my 2 frame nuc went alive over the winter. Half of its bees died during winter.