As the beekeeping season comes to an end, preparing your hive for the winter months is critical to ensuring your colony’s survival. Bees need sufficient food reserves, a well-insulated hive, and proper ventilation to make it through the cold, damp winter months. Your autumn management decisions play a major role in helping the colony survive the winter and thrive when spring arrives.
1. Ensuring Adequate Food Supplies
In Ireland’s temperate climate, honeybees need to store enough food to last through the winter, when foraging is not possible. Typically, a colony requires about 20 to 30 kg of honey to survive until spring. During your autumn hive inspections, it’s important to assess the weight of the hive to estimate how much honey the bees have stored.
- Checking Food Stores: You can estimate the amount of honey stored by lifting the hive slightly from the back or using a hive scale. If the hive feels heavy, the bees likely have sufficient stores. However, if it feels light, you may need to supplement their food to ensure they have enough to survive the winter.
- If Supplies Are Low:
- Feeding Syrup: During autumn, if you find that your bees have insufficient honey reserves, you can feed them a thick sugar syrup. The recommended ratio for autumn feeding is 2:1 sugar to water. This thicker syrup encourages the bees to store it in the comb as they would with honey. Be sure to use clean feeders and clean them regularly to prevent the spread of disease within the hive.
- Feeding Fondant: Once temperatures drop and the bees are less active, you should switch to feeding solid sugar, like fondant (sugar paste), rather than liquid syrup. Fondant can be placed on top of the frames or above the brood nest, providing a source of easily accessible food throughout the winter. Fondant is particularly useful in colder months when the bees cluster together and may not leave the cluster to access liquid food.
By ensuring that your bees have ample food reserves before winter sets in, you can significantly increase their chances of survival.
2. Reducing the Hive Entrance
As the weather turns colder, it’s important to reduce the size of the hive entrance. This helps protect the colony by preventing cold drafts from entering the hive and stops small animals, such as mice, from entering and causing damage.
- Using an Entrance Reducer: An entrance reducer is a simple piece of equipment that limits the size of the hive opening. It provides just enough space for the bees to come and go while keeping out larger intruders like mice or wasps, which might try to enter the hive in search of warmth or food.
- Preventing Pests: In addition to using an entrance reducer, you can add a fine mesh or wire over the hive entrance to further prevent mice from getting in. Mice can chew through comb and cause damage to the hive structure, so keeping them out is essential. Regularly check the entrance for signs of activity or damage from pests.
By reducing the entrance, you not only help keep pests at bay but also improve the hive’s insulation by keeping cold air out.
3. Ventilation and Insulation
One of the most critical aspects of winter hive management is ensuring proper ventilation and insulation. While bees generate heat during winter, inadequate airflow can cause condensation inside the hive. Condensation leads to damp conditions, which can be far more harmful to bees than cold temperatures alone. A damp hive creates an environment where mould and disease can thrive, weakening the colony.
- Using an Insulated Roof: Consider adding an insulated roof to your hive to help retain heat without trapping moisture inside. Insulated roofs are particularly useful in Ireland’s cold and damp winters, where managing both temperature and moisture is key to the bees’ survival. Insulation helps the bees maintain their internal hive temperature while reducing the risk of condensation forming on the inner walls of the hive.
- Providing Upper Ventilation: In addition to insulating the hive, you should ensure there is adequate ventilation to allow moisture to escape. Leaving a small upper entrance or using a quilt box filled with absorbent materials like sawdust, wood shavings, or straw can help manage humidity levels. A quilt box is placed on top of the hive and absorbs excess moisture while still allowing for proper airflow. Alternatively, you can drill a small hole near the top of the hive to allow warm, moist air to exit, reducing the risk of condensation building up inside.
- Controlling Moisture: Keep in mind that cold, dry conditions are less dangerous for bees than damp, cold environments. Focus on maintaining a balance between insulation and ventilation to keep the bees warm and dry throughout the winter months.
4. Monitoring the Hive During Winter
Once your hive is prepared for winter, it’s important to monitor the bees without disturbing them too much. During the winter, bees cluster together to keep warm, and opening the hive too frequently can disrupt this cluster, potentially leading to heat loss and stress for the colony.
- Periodic Checks: Throughout the winter, conduct quick checks to ensure the hive entrance remains clear of debris and that pests haven’t entered the hive. On milder days, you may see bees taking brief cleansing flights to expel waste, which is a good sign of colony activity.
- Feeding Fondant if Necessary: If you suspect the bees may be running low on food, you can carefully add fondant or candy above the brood nest. Avoid opening the hive too often, but if feeding is required, do so quickly and efficiently to avoid exposing the bees to cold air.
Preparing for winter is one of the most critical tasks in beekeeping. By ensuring adequate food supplies, reducing the hive entrance, managing ventilation and insulation, and conducting careful winter checks, you’ll help your colony survive the cold months and emerge strong in the spring. Taking these steps in autumn can make all the difference in keeping your bees healthy through the winter and ready to start foraging again once warmer weather returns.
