Friday, October 14, 2016

Its out of my hands now.

October 14th
We finally finished putting the bees to bed for the winter. Its out of my hands now. You kinda feel helpless. You do all you can do to help them survive the winter but in the end its out of your hands.
You can only hope the moisture level doesn't get too high, or the winter isn't tooo long that they run out of food or the mites you treated for, all died.

Below is the wrappings we did on the outside of the hives. It certainly wont win any award for the best curb appeal, but it works.     This year since we had 4 hives, I decided to wrap two hives together.
The Styrofoam is wrapped around the hives and tuck taped together, then this year I put a strap around the whole thing, just to hold it together.
The very last thing I did was drill a hole thru the insulation and the top box. This hole is in the attic box, it serves as a top vent to help get rid of excess moisture. Plus its also handy as I discovered last year....during the winter I could stick my finger in the hole and if I could feel warm air, I knew the bees were still alive.
So as far as anymore chores to do during the winter, there isn't much to do.

There are a couple things I do, one is go out and make sure their door way is clear of snow or dead bees. I have a long skinny piece of bamboo I use to poke in the opening and kinda sweep any dead bees out of the entrance area. Its normal to find dead bees during the winter and its very important not to let them pile up and block the entrance so there is no air circulation.

So  that's about it for the bee season. This winter, I will make plans for next spring. read lots and learn as much as I can about these interesting little creatures. And hopefully next year all our hives survive the winter and I will hopefully have learnt more about being a better beekeeper. I might find the odd thing to write about during the winter, but if not........Have a great winter.


Monday, October 10, 2016

Getting ready for winter


October 10th
Well I finally started winterizing the bees. It began a few days ago when we tarped the north/east sides of the bee yard. We get a lot of winds here in McBride so its nice to block them during the winter. Then yesterday I started insulating the attic boxes.
What I do is take a regular honey super and remove all the frames. I first lay the inside cover directly on top of second box which houses the winter food. I staple metal window  screen over the opening in the inside cover. Then I take the empty super and place it on top of the inside cover. I then take a old pillow case and place fiberglass insulation in it then place it in the empty super. This is my insulated attic box.
So yesterday I tackled all but the big hive. So it felt good to get that done. Today armed with smoke and all the tools I needed  to remove the top box which had some leftover frames of honey, I set out. To my surprise there were only a very small handful of bees in the top box so it was pretty easy and no smoke required. And best of all we got 2 frames of honey, which I decided to save for the bees in the spring.
At supper tonight we were watching the news and seen that the temperatures are suppose to drop down to -10C. So I decided we are going to start wrapping the hives tomorrow. But before we do that, we need to move 2 hives together on one pallet so we can wrap two hives together. Hive #3 and #4 are already on the same pallet so its just a case of lining them up and wrapping them. The difficult one is of course the Big Hive. I had this brilliant idea this spring to set it on this plastic pallet we got but during the hot summer months and the heavy honey flow...the plastic pallet started to collapse. So while james tipped the hive I placed little pieces of wood under it to prevent the hive from tipping over. You can see it in the photo below.


So now we will have to lift it up and carry it over to the pallet next to it. How fun is that going to be.
Anyways we will get her done. And I will post photos of us doing it and how we go about wrapping them for the winter. That's it for now.