This Month in the Bee Yard

November

November is the time to get all hives ready for winter.  Those preparations were mentioned last month but will be repeated this month and they are as follows:  1) Remove the queen excluder if part of the winter stores is above the excluder, 2) put an entrance reducer in place on each hive to keep the mice out, 3) raise the hive cover approximately 1/8 of an inch in order to provide upward ventilation and 4) check to make sure that each colony has enough honey to get them through the winter.

1) Remove the queen excluder if part of the winter stores is above the excluder.  The queen excluder is removed so the queen won't be trapped below as the colony moves up through the excluder to get to the honey stores in the super above.  If the queen were unable to move with the cluster, she would chill and die. 

2) Put an entrance reducer in place to keep the field mice out of the hive.  Mice can be a problem any time the bees cannot guard the entrance because of low temperatures.  By installing the entrance reducer during a warm day, one would most likely avoid trapping a mouse inside the hive.  Most commercial entrance reducers have two different size openings, one small opening and a larger three-inch opening.  The three inch long (3/8 of an inch high) opening is recommended for wintering a full size colony.

3) Raise the hive cover approximately 1/8 of an inch in order to provide upward ventilation.  This ventilation is very important and can be accomplished by placing four small sticks or shims on the topside of the inner cover to prop up the top hive cover.  The moisture generated by the bees is vented through the opening in the inner cover to the outside instead of forming on the underneath side of the inner cover and dripping back on the clustered bees.  This assumes of course that there is a normal hole or opening in the inner cover.  Bees have little trouble with cold temperatures but cold temperatures in combination with moisture dripping back on the cluster can kill a colony.  If during later checks, moisture is found on the underneath side of the inner cover, replace the spacers with larger sticks or shims.  

4) Check to make sure that each colony has enough honey to get them through the winter.  A colony with a shallow super full of honey (30 lb.) and at least three deep frames of honey (3 x 5 = 15 lb.) in the brood chamber should be enough to get them through the winter without being fed.  The bees should be mostly located in the bottom brood chamber in the fall and only move up into the super or second hive body when the honey below is used up.  kgp