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.