Winter Prep

The weather is changing, and you feel that winter is just around the corner so what do you do with your Layens hives?  Below I will share what I do for my hives, and hopefully it may give you some ideas for yours.  I will also assume you are using an insulated Layens hive but may or may not have an insulated lid so I will call out what to do in both cases.

When

I live in Southwest Ohio.  Where you live is important and you may experience seasonal differences so don’t take dates or times I mention on face value.  Always consider and react to your local conditions year around when working with your bees.  In Ohio, overnight temperatures normally begin to drop in October along with the leaves.  Temperatures can certainly vary throughout the fall, but you should watch for nights consistently dropping between 60°F-50°F.  If you’re wearing a light jacket in the morning, you’re likely experiencing this temperature drop.

If bees are experiencing these temps they will begin clustering at night as an emergency survival response wasting valuable resources and energy (lifespan) especially if there is brood present.  Days can warm up with clear skies but it’s the night time temperature that I feel is your key indicator to planning your winter preparations.  At these temperatures bees who are not insulated and protected from the quick changes of the outside temperatures coming through the wall of the hive may start consuming more resources to increase their core temperature above 70°F or above 90°F if there is brood to protect.

That is a big increase and one that takes a lot of work and resources to complete night after night in an uninsulated hive because the night temps seep in so quickly (fast conduction).  This doesn’t allow the bees to communicate and respond at their normal rate, forcing immediate action rather than a progressive response.  As a side note, in an uninsulated hive heat also seeps in quickly in the summer, forcing the bees to begin fanning earlier in the day than they would if the transmission process (conduction) was slowed by insulation.  Like your home insulation helps in the summer and winter.

Remember that your bees have handled hot summer temperatures just fine.  They evolutionarily emerged from more tropical origins.  So, it’s not an issue if they are warmer.  They know how to handle this quite well even if you get a short warming spell after you prep.  The cold is always the issue for them as it is with most animals and insects.  Keep an eye on your favorite weather app, which most have a feature where you can see the forecasted temperature trend.

Location

Your location is more impactful than you might expect.  Here in Southwest Ohio, we have lots of hills, valley areas and a large river running by.  All these geographical characteristics can vary your day and night time temperatures, moisture, wind, and rain patterns.  This can have an impact on the temperature range in your area even to the point of changes right around your hives based on where they are placed.  For instance, you may have a frost warning but your neighbor a mile away may not experience any at all.  Keep these things in mind.  Like the housing market it’s all about location, location, location.

This is also important in the winter.  If you have your hives in a well-protected backyard your bees may do better than someone with theirs in an open farm field because of wind and exposure.  In this situation you would want to provide some type of additional exterior protection if possible.  Remember, insulation is only going to provide so much protection and sometimes a well-situated wind block can really make a difference.

Take Stock

Once you know its time take stock of your hives.  What is their condition?  Are they a large or small colony?  How many frames of brood do they still have?  Or maybe how many frames of empty brood space do you want to leave them? Lastly, how many frames of resources do they have?  Regarding this last point, don’t include in your count bands of honey above the brood areas just yet.

Here is my formula and please take it as a tested guideline and not a hard fast rule.  I like to reduce my 20-frame Layens hives to just have 10 frames to carry the colony through the winter.  This would look like 2 full resource frames by the entrance outside wall, 6 brood frames in the middle, and 2 final full resource frames by the divider board.  You may ask, is 10 the perfect number and honestly 12 or 8 would also work as long as you have the 2 resource frames on either side of the brood frames.  I use 10 frames because this returns the colony back to what has been tested as the perfect cavity size for honey bee swarms in the spring, 40L space which is half your 20-frame Layens hive or 2 deep Langstroth boxes stack on each other.

Now let’s return to the honey above the brood.  I like to see a good 4-5 inches of capped honey above the brood area which is likely where the colony will stay all winter long.  This is the primary honey resource for them.  Given the hive is insulated and the headrails touch you have created a heat and humidity dome above them and the natural air convection will circulate cooling air down along the outsides depositing moisture the bees will need in the winter on the lower half of the outside frames just like inside a tree cavity.  This helps the resource frames on the sides to stay warm and be available longer as the winter progresses.  You will have encapsulated them in honey stores that will also capture, retain, and release some heat from the colony additionally aiding in reducing conduction.

Remember when you reduce the frame count, by likely removing the resource frames that are only partially filled, you are not reducing the colony count.  You are increasing the density of bees by creating a smaller space.  This has the benefit of making it easier for the bees to manage their internal environment with fewer empty and cold spots.

Make the change

So, you’ve decided it’s time.  How do you actually do this?

1. (possible materials: ½” hardware cloth) I would suggest the first thing you do before you walk away from your hive and forget about it is to prepare the entrances. You can do this with minimal disturbance of the bees at the beginning verses in a possible cloud of bees later. If you have any entrances ventilated go ahead and close these.  Over the main entrance place a piece of 1/2” square hardware cloth.  This will keep the mice from nesting in the warm hive over the winter.  I usually place this behind the entrance disk and leave it there year-round.  I also reduce the entrance to half closed.  I have found that my bees propolis the inside of a fully opened entrance down to the size of a pea over the winter much like they would the entrance to a tree cavity.
2. (possible materials: Insulation) If your lid is fully insulated (twice the R-value of your walls to help with convection) you don’t have any additional work. The permanent lid insulation will protect the colony from summer heat conduction and winter cold conduction so it’s a year-round solution.  If you have a ventilated lid, then you do need to consider adding winter insulation cut to fit and lying flat on the headrails.  It should fit nicely inside the lid without lifting the lid and breaking the seal with the top edge of the hive. The insulation should lay flat on the headrails without any air gaps between them that could create a space where convection processes may introduce moisture.   This can be a combination of insulation thicknesses stacked to achieve the R-value you want.  Reflective surfaces should be turned downward toward the headrails to assist in capturing escaping heat and radiating it back down into the colony.  You may be worried about moisture but if you use an insulation material that is moisture resistant and you assure there are no gaps where moisture can be captured the humidity from the bees respiration will stay within the colony space and in the wood fibers of the headrails eventually falling with the cooling air and forming water drops on the lower sides of the outside frames or inner walls.  Moisture retention is the main reason I no longer use wool pillows.  I found that they absorb and hold moisture (a lot for large colonies) that rises off the headrails and often begins to mold when temps turn warmer.
3. (possible materials: Insulation, HVAC tape) If you have an insulated lid then you don’t want a ventilation gap at the bottom of your divider board while the reverse is required if you do have a ventilated lid to allow moisture to escape through the ventilation holes in the sides of the lid. In both cases I suggest adding insulation to the outside of the divider board to match the R-value of the hive sides.  Foam can be cut to fit tightly side to side, so you don’t often need to fix it in place to the divider board but be very certain that is the case.  A piece of light weight insulation that falls away from the divider board provides no value to the colony.  Also, if you are venting then the bees can get to both the insulation on the divider and what you have on the headrails.  Bees love to chew insulation.  I would suggest sealing any cut edges of insulation with silver HVAC tape.  Remember whether you vent or not the empty area inside the hive will eventually normalize to the temperature of the outside air.  This space will not be heated by the bees so insulating your colony from this cold space will help rather than letting your divider try to do it by itself at an R-value of 1.

Wait and Relax

So, you’ve completed the work above.  Now what do you do?  Relax and wait for spring to come when you have a chance to get back into the hive.  You have set them up with everything they need to work just like a tree cavity, their natural home.  Given the proper conditions they evolutionarily know how to use the space.  A fully insulated hive with a single entrance and no ventilation is just like a tree.  They will gather in the upper space and likely have some mobility over the winter because of the beneficial conditions.  Also, this type of hive allows the bees as a super organism to take advantage of the increased CO2 levels near the interior ceiling to induce beneficial hypoxia effects reducing their winter metabolism which will result in less food consumption and also as a result less release of moisture through their respiration.  Less eating also means less waste piling up in the lower gut.

It’s important to know why you are doing things and I hope that I’ve explained the “Why” behind the techniques above.  If you have more questions don’t hesitate to reach out to us using our convenient submission form on our website (wildhives.com).  Also check out a number of other blogs on our site related to winter bees and thermodynamics to learn even more about what makes winter bees and their ideal winter home, the tree cavity.