Well, at least not for your bees ...
Hopefully while reading this your bees have been all buttoned up and been put to bed for about 2 months now. Personally, I always seem to get a late jump on it, but apparently that’s the way it’s going to shake out with my bees. I was helping everyone else check their colonies and finally got to my own gals round mid-November. In retrospect, with all the rain I found there was very little hive manipulation needed this winter. Under the right conditions, the bees prepare for over-wintering on their own. As I become more in-tune with the species I realize my part as a beekeeper is becoming less about hive manipulation and more about providing the bees with a clean, well-ventilated home that has space to expand in the spring and then adjusting that extra space in the fall. Last year was an exception with the incredible nectar dearth we experienced in Napa, but for the most part I am keeping a close eye on my bees but doing continually less-invasive procedures that tend to throw the bees off their game.
This time of year is slow in the apiary. My bees are prepared with all the necessary stores of both nectar and pollen to optimistically get them through the next few months of cold weather. A couple of things I am doing a little differently in my winter protocol is going back to monitoring trays and physically weighing each hive every visit. Not sure what the hell I was thinking, but for the last few years I quit using my monitoring trays. Probably because they got misplaced in the bee yard over the summer so I just figured oh well, the bees can live without them. Of course I would always use trays with those smaller colonies I felt may be compromised by the cold temperatures. However, with my big mammas I figured ahhh, we live in California they’ll be fine, and luckily they were. Protection from the elements is only one of the functions of the monitoring tray. Since this year I am accountable for a lot more bees than just my own, I have been watching the trays very closely; they can tell you volumes about what is happening in the hives throughout the winter. Sure, the tray will also shed a little light on your varroa loads, but really, what can you do about varroa this time of year anyway? Actually, what can you do about any of it this time of year anyway…? I guess you could pull some sort of major heroics and drop formic or thymol on your bees if you see a heavy mite load. That’d be foolish.
A) Those medications won’t work in colder temps as thymol needs to be at least 59 degrees and formic 55.4 degrees minimum. Highs today were 55 degrees. I’m not even going to spend the time discussing apistan,. If you are using apistan, or ANY medications prophylactically, you ARE part of the problem.
B) You’re going to let all the heat out of your hive and most likely the bees will not be able to regain temperatures and will freeze at night. Remember, if the cluster temp drops much below 50 degrees you’ll start to see reproductive problems with your queen in the spring.
C) You should be seeing an increased mite drop this time of year. Significantly less brood leaves fewer cells for the varroa to reproduce in. So, either way, you’ll kill the mites but you may kill your bees too. It’s the down time of the year for bees, so give ‘em a break. Bottom line is DON’T OPEN YOUR HIVE this time of year!
When it comes to weighing my hives I use a proper scale. I guess the one I'm using is some sort of big game hunting scale with an L-bar I slide under the back side of the hive. I don’t presume I’m getting an accurate weight, only a number I can quantify and watch decrease in the winter as the bees eat through their stores. I haven’t had the scale long enough to see the weights increase again in the spring, and I’m less concerned with that. In the spring I just open the hive to see what’s going on inside. I don’t think one necessarily needs a hillbilly backwoods deer scale like mine, you can just very gently and slowly lift the back of your hive to get a good sense of the honey stores. However, don’t be getting all Arnold on your hives from over lifting, just every once in awhile. I’m sure it must be a little annoying to the bees to have their house upturned too often.
There are two final things I do before I leave my winter bee apiary. First I have a good look around the front of the hive for discarded bees. During the winter the mortuary bees have a difficult time breaking the warm cluster to clean any dead bees that may be left inside the hive. If you look closely you’ll see dead, deformed-wing bees, normal die-off, and even in the case of those ultra-hygienic bees there may be a few larvae that are infected by varroa. Watch the entrance for bees bringing in pollen and nectar. Most the bees I see this time of year with pollen are foraging on the early mustard. Something Toucan Serge bought up at our last meeting is you should follow your nose. I haven’t done it yet, but makes perfect sense to take in a big fat huff of that beautiful bee-ness. One can tell a lot about the health of a hive by the smell. That sweet golden amber smell of love -- it by and large means to me the hive is productive and free of the more invasive brood diseases. If while huffing your hives you get a waft of funky old gym shoes a red flag should go up. Foul brood is called “foul” for a reason -- it smells dank. Problem is that if by the time you can smell brood disease it’s pretty far along. Far enough along that you could very quickly become part of the problem, a big problem. We’ll save that for later.
Lastly, you can take all the mental notes you’d like but to learn the most from your observations you have to record them someplace. I do both old school hard copy, pencil to paper and digital. Not to say I’m transcribing all my field notes but I always carry my little Cannon Powershot SD1100is digital Elph. I shoot everything.... and more. The beauty of these new digi cameras is they track the time and date of images. Currently in my iphoto library I have 3,147 bee images I made in 2008 and closer to 4K in 2009. I also keep an old analog negative binder, which is just a glorified 3-ring binder with all the sides enclosed. I use it to record the hive activity in my apiaries and store my pencils. Of course I could be better at record keeping, and I will be in 2010, I feel it is a key priority in keeping track of the health and genetic lines of my bees. I believe it sets the real bee players aside from the rest. If you are going to substantiate bee fact let’s see it in record, at least that’s my opinion.
Here is all you'll need minus your nose and eyes for a complete winter hive check. Some sort of scraper to clean your monitoring tray, if you decide to clean them, some prefer not to regularly. A hillbilly hunting scale, a binder or some other means of recording notes, writing utensils, and I carry an iphone for emergency low res images and a way to get an exact location on the GPS.
Close-up of my notes and the hillbilly hand scale, as seen on Deliverance.
Looking at an exposed monitoring tray this would be an average cluster size for this time of year.
Looking at an exposed monitoring tray this would be a small cluster for this time of year.
Looking at an exposed monitoring tray this would be a pretty big cluster for this time of year.
A cluster that is really front and center - moldy pollen too, yuck.
Beautiful BD 2:1 sugar water - I generally try my best not to feed my bees, but if I have to, I'll use the Rudy recipe including chamomile, comfrey, and a pinch of salt. Not sure it's any better for my bees but it's got to be better than a bunch of empty calories.
Sometimes if I don't have a top feeder I'll use a boardman style feeder placed on the top bars of the hive inside an empty hive body to discourage robbing. Some guys (Serge) I kinow use the large yogurt containers with 1/16th holes drilled in it in the same manner. Either way try to keep food contained and away from those rouge bees.
Hive roof ruuuusted......
One nation under a grove - One hive stand covered in goo. This year I tried Tangle Foot as a way to get a knock down on those pesty ants.
Take more pictures of bees
Toucan Serge
Lastly, here is my gift to you.... A copy of my hive records. Feel free to duplicate them, however, one might just use my copy as a springboard for a much better version that is more compatible with their work flow. I have sort of gone off this whole page for each colony every visit type of record, why else would I give it away for free. Really though, come up with a record system that works for you, is easy for you, and makes it convenient to keep better records.
Download Bee Hive Records
