How do you Overwinter Your Bees

[snelgrove]

Just wondering how everyone over winters there bees, open mesh floors, solid floors, coverboard holes open , cover board insulated, inspection tray in or out, mouse guards used or not.
Kept bees for thirty years but only used mesh floors last few years, left trays in with mouseguard in place over a two inch deep entrance. Feed hole open, I am inclined to think leave inspection tray out and insulated cover board is the way to go. However, I no its been written that the bees wouldn't be cold with an open floor but it goes against the grain to leave the floor open.
Apologies should have posted this in beekeeping forum

 

[madasafish]

Insulated everything, supers below brood, inspection tray in..

 

[snelgrove]

Insulated everything, supers below brood, inspection tray in..

Super empty or with frames and combs I wintered some single brood national hives with empty super below brood box and you can see the cluster hanging in the empty box

 

[madasafish]

Super empty or with frames and combs I wintered some single brood national hives with empty super below brood box and you can see the cluster hanging in the empty box

Both..

I use below brood box as a storage space for supers.

 

[Eyeman]

With minimal interference!
My bees can look after themselves without the need for any faffing from me.
They go in healthy and well fed and come out ready to face a new season.

 

[dexter's shed]

With minimal interference!
My bees can look after themselves without the need for any faffing from me.
They go in healthy and well fed and come out ready to face a new season.

cover boards open and closed depending on hive, mesh floors open,feed with candy boards and walk away, check next season

 

[Karsal]

Using poly hives with insulated super on. I did leave my hives open mesh floors on over winter last year. I found one hive had hundreds of dead bees outside on the floor in front of the hive. Collected a sample and had them checked. Nothing found so I closed the open mesh floor up and swept the bees up. Never had any more mass fatalities for the rest of the winter.
The hive has produced 47lb of honey this season.

 

[Erichalfbee]

50mm PIR insulation on top of crown board.
14x12 brood box
Nadired shallow if there are any un-extractable honey frames; left till spring inspection.
OMF
Of five going into winter four are poly, two have nadired shallows.
One is cedar and has a nadired shallow too. This one will have a PIR cosy popped on when feeding is finished.

 

[Gilberdyke John]

Just wondering how everyone over winters there bees, open mesh floors, solid floors, coverboard holes open , cover board insulated, inspection tray in or out, mouse guards used or not.
Kept bees for thirty years but only used mesh floors last few years, left trays in with mouseguard in place over a two inch deep entrance. Feed hole open, I am inclined to think leave inspection tray out and insulated cover board is the way to go. However, I no its been written that the bees wouldn't be cold with an open floor but it goes against the grain to leave the floor open.
Apologies should have posted this in beekeeping forum

I'm surprised this needs asking yet again. Following various threads throughout the last few years and applying a reasonable bit of engineering logic - crownboards should not have any holes in them summer or winter. If you use feeder boards then the hole should be closed at all times unless a feeder is in use.
The crownboard should be a tight fit to the brood box to prevent air rising through the brood and escaping from the hive since cold air will be draw up from below and energy wasted in heating it. Would you leave your loft door open in winter (or summer for that matter)
Insulate the top of the hive and preferably the sides also. I use watertight celotex hive cozy's which sit over the hive (less weather roof) in the same manner as a tea cozy over a teapot. Condensation does not occur as the insulation keeps the inner hive surface warm.
If you use mesh floors the slide should be out or you risk trapping detritus where it is inaccessible to the bees and they can neither clean it out or deal with any parasites that settle there. Draughts from below can be minimised by sitting the hive over an empty super box or creating other wind protection. In my case I have breeze blocks as hive stands and I place loose blocks across the opening between the two blocks the hive sits on. This stops the winds but allows air to percolate through to the space below the hive.

 

[GlenJ]

Hive 1-national brood + super inside wbc case - will put super under brood and leave floor open
Hive 2 - national - feeding and will leave floor open
Hive 3 - national inside wbc case - feed and leave floor open
Hive 4 - national - feed and will leave floor open
Hive 5 - poly national - feed and leave floor open
Hive 6 - Warre - good luck to them - solid floor and ok so far!

 

[oliver90owner]

14 x 12, with top insulation over the solid crownboard, and OMF. Very occasionally I might partly cover the OMFs of hives close to home, but only temporarily in extreme weather for those that might be encouraged to start brooding early..

Colonies are normally thymol treated to remove varroah before winter bees are brooded and boxes are left full of stores, in peace, all winter until spring activity. Most entrances are narrow, vertically, and fill width.

For the occasional colony with solid floor, for some obscure reason, still no top ventilation but the brood box raised on matchstick equivalents - wire nails, per eg.

 

[domino]

14 x 12, with top insulation over the solid crownboard, and OMF. Very occasionally I might partly cover the OMFs of hives close to home, but only temporarily in extreme weather for those that might be encouraged to start brooding early..

Pretty much what I do. Floor out, bit of padding on the crown-board, check for food - wrap in wire have a nose every few weeks to make use nothing awful has happened.

 

[MattC]

Matchsticks, anyone?

[dives for cover]

 

[Hivemaker.]

Matchsticks, anyone?

Some use them under the corners of the crown boards in winter, they have some notion about it keeping the bees dry and nice and cool.

 

[Finman]

.
You should have out there some good collected advice, how to prepare hive to winter. It must a good book about it.

This kind of strange collection of short sentences makes not much sense. I doubt that beginner gets much sense from this.

Good spring build up is part of wintering.


Odd habits are layed their eggs into forum. To put capped honey to lowest, empty super to lowest. Mixing ventilation systems of mesh and solid floors. They are not needed.

minimum colony colony size od safe wintering, without one frane or aoidea innovations. Essential part in it is, how small colony can build up in spring.


That is bigger story than eternal joking with match sticks.

 

[Plenty of honey]

I have Dadants with the pre fabricated Plastic Nocot base, fully ventilated and open. I use combined feeder/ frame cover, which i leave the inner access to the feeder, open. this creates a chimney effect.
They ventilate and breath all winter.
Inside the feeder tray i put 3cm styrofoam, but leave the "chimney" clear.
Like us, we don't mind cold and dry, Bees are the same , they hate cold and Wet,
Humidity dripping on to the cluster is always the worse case scenario.

 

[B+.]

.
Good spring build up is part of wintering.

Finman is right about this. A simple way of assessing the way bees overwinter is to count the number frames occupied by bees (the gaps between the frames) in October then again the first time you open the hives in the spring. The difference is the number of bees that have over-wintered. Preparing bees for winter allows them to organise their stores and brood rearing as winter approaches. The earlier this is done, the better.

Spring build up can be assessed by noting the date when the first super is needed. You can rank the build up according to which colonies are supered first

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

To answer the OP's question
All my hives have solid crownboards NO OPEN HOLES - any holes are covered and the bees make short work of glueing them down - no matchstick gaps or any nonsense of that kind.
I have a square of 50mm celotex glued into all my roofs (needless to say this stays on all year) no twee little cosies, bobble hats, puffer jackets or brown paper wrapping .
All floors are OMF and stay open all winter - inspection trays all stowed securely in the shed until next autumn.
I have underfloor entrances so don't need mouseguards - these are open full width all year, however the association hives have conventional floors the entrances are single beespace height and are kept as about a third width all the year round - again no mouse guards.
Hope this helps

 

[Tom Bick]

All double brood hives stay on double brood for the winter.
Single brood hives get a super of part capped stores under for the winter.
If no permanent insulation in the rooves a one inch slab is placed over the crown board.
During early spring inspection trays are fitted but adjusted to allow for some ventilation.
Fondant given to hives that feel slightly light.

 

[snelgrove]

To answer the OP's question
All my hives have solid crownboards NO OPEN HOLES - any holes are covered and the bees make short work of glueing them down - no matchstick gaps or any nonsense of that kind.
I have a square of 50mm celotex glued into all my roofs (needless to say this stays on all year) no twee little cosies, bobble hats, puffer jackets or brown paper wrapping .
All floors are OMF and stay open all winter - inspection trays all stowed securely in the shed until next autumn.
I have underfloor entrances so don't need mouseguards - these are open full width all year, however the association hives have conventional floors the entrances are single beespace height and are kept as about a third width all the year round - again no mouse guards.
Hope this helps

Yes thanks