Overwintering Bees: What Do Bees Do in the Winter?

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[00:01:30] Introducing Leo Sharashkin

Jessica Mitchell: Well, thank you so much for joining us today, Leo. I’m excited to get into this podcast. We haven’t done too many on wintering bees on the Mother Earth News and Friends podcast. So before we jump into that, I thought I’d just give you a moment to introduce yourself to our listeners.

Leo Sharashkin: I’m Dr. Leo Sharashkin, originally from Russia.

I got a degree in forestry from University of Missouri, Columbia, and then we got a farm in the Ozarks and started doing natural beekeeping. So now [00:02:00] this is what I do as a full-time occupation, natural beekeeping, keeping bees alive for supporting local blossoming landscapes and also my family in the process.

And I have a website, free advice on natural beekeeping, free plans for building your own equipment and beehives that are good for the bees: www.HorizontalHive.com. One thing that I do differently from many beekeepers is that instead of the vertical stack of boxes, which are very hard on the bees and hard on your back, I use hives where all of the frames are on the same level, horizontal hives, that you can see on the website.

And also I’m editor of several books on nature beekeeping, including the best seller Keeping Bees with a Smile. The second edition was published jointly with Mother Earth News, and you can see it all on www.HorizontalHive.com as well.

Jessica Mitchell: Well, we are happy to have you [00:03:00] on the podcast today, and Leo’s been on a previous podcast with us that we’ll make sure to link in the show notes, and that’s all about how to be a natural beekeeper and what it means to keep horizontal hives. So if you’re interested in that, you can go ahead and, and check that out in our show notes.

But today we’re gonna be talking about how do you prepare your bees for winter. So we’ll be talking about the behaviors of bees, how the colony changes during this season, and then what you can do as a beekeeper to prepare your colonies for winter. And then a couple tips about maintaining those colonies over the winter.

[00:03:37] What Do Bees Do in the Winter?

Jessica Mitchell: What do bees do during winter and how do they survive? How do they survive without fresh pollen? How do they keep warm? What goes on inside those hives?

Leo Sharashkin: Let me back-pedal a little bit here and the answer to your question obviously depends on where the bees live.

If the beehives are in Florida, then [00:04:00] wintering for the bees is not very different from the rest of the year. But of course, if the, if the beehives are in Wisconsin or Michigan, then they will be going into the wintering mode of which we will primarily talk today. So I think it’s very interesting to look at the bees and realize that they and us humans share something in common.

If you live in a tropical climate, you can go without a home or clothing in terms of physical survival in the winter. But if you are in the north, then you need clothing. You need a good home. This is true for us and also for the honeybees. So what it essentially tells us that the tropics is the home climate for both us and for the honeybees. And the farther north you go, the more important that becomes for humans and honeybees to have additional protection in winter. So again, as our children of the tropical climate, bees [00:05:00] do not need any extra preparations for winter other than storing supplies of honey if there is no flowering of flowers during that time.

But in terms of temperatures, in tropical climate, many species of the honeybees even live in the open on cliffs and on branches of trees in Indonesia. That’s because our temperatures are warm enough throughout the year to not require any additional protection.

Evolutionary, bees migrated farther north and developed more adaptations for surviving in colder climates. One of the ways they can survive in a climate that’s much colder than the tropics is moving and living inside structures like hollow trees or inside cliffs and rocks, anywhere where they will be able to protect themselves better from the winter.

So if we talk about temperate climate, where there is our cold [00:06:00] temperatures and freezing cold temperatures during the winter, then these need to be well protected and clustered together to conserve their heat during the winter. It’s very important because unlike many other insects, or even other forms of life like frogs or or snakes, bees do not really hibernate in the winter. Sometimes you hear people say, oh, my bees are hibernating in the hive for the winter. Well, you can say so just to describe your impression of what’s going on there, but it’s not technically speaking hibernation.

Bees do not go into this state when all of the metabolism shut downs, like some insects. Some insects, they just go dormant. Bees are not dormant. They’re actually hot blooded insects like us, and they need to maintain warm enough temperature to not freeze. [00:07:00] Actually, if their body temperature goes too low, they go into what’s called a chill coma, from which they may never awaken. They will just freeze to that.

So what bees do in the winter, again, if we talk about colder climate, they go inside the nest, and the nest would be either inside your beehive or in nature. Of course, it would be inside a hollow tree in the woods, inside a cliff. And to conserve the animal heat the best, they go into a cluster, just one be e against the other, creating this very thick mass of bees, which makes it easier for them to conserve the heat.

Now, of course, there is not only the cold, but also lack of possibility to forage during the winter months. This is why bees’ survival depends on two things. First, being able to stay warm, somewhere where it’s well protected and insulated. And second, having enough food [00:08:00] reserves that they are able to sustain themselves there in this wintering cluster without leaving the hive, sometimes for as long as six months.

And this is where honey comes in. This is their wintering fuel, like propane or some other form of heat is for us. This is what the bees collect during the summer, not only to share with us as beekeepers, the honey eaters, but people don’t realize calling them honey bees, that bees are not really into honey. It’s their fuel. It’s not a delicacy. It forces their food a source of energy. But the reason they collect so much honey is just the necessity of surviving during the very long and cold, the months of the winter, when they’re not able to get this. And also pollen, which is their protein source from the flowers.

Jessica Mitchell: That makes a lot of sense. And it’s such a great reminder too that, you know, before [00:09:00] people started harvesting honey, the bees just used it as food to survive. And I feel like sometimes when we pull honey off the shelves, we kind of forget about that.

Leo Sharashkin: Oh, you know, the famous honeybee biologist who got a Nobel prize for discovering the language of how these communicate with one another. Karl von Frisch, the German researcher, he was saying that if you think about how much work goes into making even one teaspoon of honey, you wouldn’t be able to swallow this one teaspoon of honey the same way as, say, one teaspoon of milk or a bit of a cucumber, et cetera. So you are totally correct. The amount of effort that goes into preparing this honey is impressive.

Just think about it, the nectar that the bees turn into honey is spread all over the flowers, and bees can fly two miles, sometimes farther, from the hive to collect all of this [00:10:00] nectar. So it’s like 8,000 acres that they survey. The hive may be here in your backyard or on the farmer’s land. But bees are like tentacles of a huge octopus. When they go in all directions to get a hold of this nectar.

So in a very direct sense, winter survival of the bees is not just the product of the hive itself and the insect, but it’s almost like a teamwork and team project on the part of the bees, but also 8,000 acres of flowers that provide them this winter in fuel.

[00:10:37] How Cold Is Too Cold for Bees?

Jessica Mitchell: That’s amazing. During the wintertime for bees, is there a certain temperature they can withstand when they’re keeping warm in their hive, or can they get into pretty extreme temperatures if need be?

Leo Sharashkin: As I mentioned, the bees need to maintain certain warm temperature because under the threshold of about 50 degrees or less, actually it’s probably 48 [00:11:00] degrees, they go into this very inactive state. Coma, when they shut down. The longer they stay at this very low temperature, the higher the chance that they will not be able to come back from this standby mode and be alive again.

They do not freeze or die immediately, but there is only a certain short period of time where they can stay at these colder temperatures. Otherwise, they need the temperature of 50 degrees at the very minimum. Or higher. So imagine this is their task, no matter how cold outside. It may be minus 30 outside. I’ve seen bees go over winter in even climates like Montana in the mountains near Yellowstone National Park. It can be extremely cold in the winter. But even if it’s minus three outside. And even though the winter in a beehive with the open door, that’s [00:12:00] what people do not realize. It’s like it’s not just surviving when it’s cold, it’s surviving when it’s extremely cold outside. And you need to have the window or the door open in your home at all times. Because they continuously need ventilation. Just as us, they inhale oxygen and they exhale CO2. And if the bees were sealed up completely to preserve heat in the winter and they’re closed all of the openings to the outside, yes, they would save more heat, but they would suffocate and they would die through suffocation.

So it’s a necessity for them not only to conserve the heat, but also have some fresh air. So it’s amazing that when it’s minus 30 outside and they have a small opening, they get fresh air, they still will be maintaining a temperature of at least 50 degrees on the surface of their cluster. [00:13:00]

Now if the temperature is warmer, if they’re able to have a high temperature inside this bee tree or inside the hive because you build, say, an insulated beehive, or if you wrapped your hive in straw for the winter, we’ll talk more about how to prepare your beehives for wintering later. But if the hive is well insulated and the temperature is slightly higher, they don’t need to be clustering as tightly. They can be moving a little bit more there. Clustering in this very thick wintering cluster is really a response to the extreme heat when they cannot afford losing any more heat.

So, inside the cluster, they maintain anywhere from 55 to 85 degrees, depending on the weather and also depending on whether they’re rearing brood. When bees start rearing brood, brood is the baby bees any form from the egg that the queen [00:14:00] lays all the way to the larva and then to the larva that’s done a cocoon and, and pupated until she becomes an adult honeybee that emerges from the cell. So all of this brood production requires 95 degree temperature, and bees in the dead of the winter usually shut down their brood production because it’ll be very wasteful trying to maintain 95 degrees up there in the core of the cluster when it’s minus 20 degrees outside.

So yes, the bees are able to maintain this temperature no matter how cold outside. And the mechanism is as follows. They have this tight cluster and they’re inside, it’s warmer than outside. And the bees rotate. When the bees are on the surface of the cluster exposed literally to freezing cold air, when they feel they’re getting chilled to the point that they may die, [00:15:00] they crawl inside the cluster to warm themselves up and also to get some honey to replenish the energy reserves.

And some bees from the inside of the cluster, where they’re warmer, will take the place in the, what’s called the crust or the mantle of this cluster. And just there is this very slow circulation of bees from inside out and from outside in, and they keep moving like that. And in the end, everyone is warm, even in these extremes of conditions.

And again, I would like to point out here are two things. From this discussion that follows that if we as beekeepers can give bees a well insulated house, a beehive, it would go long ways in helping them prevent these extreme of situations where their survival is at stake. And the second observation is this. There is a [00:16:00] tremendous variation in the genetics of the bees, and obviously the, like any other animal or plant, they’re adapted to where they’re native to. That means that if you’re in the north, it’s much better to be working with locally adapted bees, the swarms from the local wilderness that will be winter hardy, compared to the packaged bees that are raised in subtropical, tropical climate and then shipped all over the country, including to the extreme north.

The non-local bees will likely not have the kind of winter hardiness that your local bees are. And you mentioned this other podcast that we previously did. Listeners can go back and listen all about the importance of having local stock of bees for better adaptation and disease resistance.

Jessica Mitchell: Absolutely. Yeah. We touched a lot about using local bees instead of bringing in bees from different areas to suit your [00:17:00] area. Absolutely. If people want to go and listen to that, they can.

[00:17:04] The Beekeeper’s Role in Overwintering Bees

Jessica Mitchell: So during these fall and winter months, as a beekeeper, what are the main focuses during this time? Is it less about, you know, harvesting the honey of course, and more just about maintaining and keeping an eye on the colonies?

Leo Sharashkin: Long, long time before winter sets in. And there are three major things that are often not thought of as relevant for wintering. All people think about, oh, I need to give bees enough food for the winter and, oh, I need to make sure the hive is warm. But no, there are three other things that are even more important.

Number one step in preparing for the winter, as we already mentioned, is to get the colonies of bees that are acclimated for local conditions. Unless you do this as the very first step, almost nothing else will be able to rectify the problems. It’s like compare it [00:18:00] with getting a subtropical plant, like an orange tree and you want to overwinter it successfully outdoors in Michigan. Of course you could do it, but you would probably have to make a big hay stack around it to insulate it for the winter and do all kinds of other procedures just to try to prevent it from freezing.

The same with the bees. If you work with the subtropical, the Italian queens that are very widely commercially available in this country. So if you take Italian honeybees and you are in the north, you are already pushing it. It’s just very hard to overwinter successfully the insects, the animals, or the plants that are just plain, not adapted to the climate you are trying to overwinter them in. So this is number one. As we discussed in the previous podcast, locally adapted bees is the way to go.

Number two, it’s very, [00:19:00] very important not just to make sure that bees have enough food for the winter, but the quality of the food is extremely important. Unfortunately, it’s all too common for conventional beekeeping to take honey from the bees as much as you can. And so they don’t starve in winter, you feed them back not their own honey, but sugar syrup. There’s a big problem here because nutritionally, of course, their sugar syrup is not as good as bees’ own honey. It may have high content of sugars and energy, but what about all the other things, like enzymes and vitamins and minerals, et cetera, something that makes honey honey, and not just syrup.

There is one more issue here. When beekeepers take all of the bees’ honey for themselves and they feed back sugar syrup late in the fall, it gives these additional work to process the syrup to [00:20:00] the point where it may become edible in the winter. And this is when you don’t want to give too much work for the bees because they have the long winter ahead of them. They need to have as much of their energy in the reserve to survive the winter. So just the task itself of processing gallons of sugar syrup plate late in the fall is very demanding. And again, it goes against the honeybee biology. You know what will happen to you if you eat too much fine sugar. The same problem you will see with the bees.

Many beekeepers who indulge in feeding their bees sugar syrup in the fall will then experience beehives are full of basically bees with diarrhea. It’s called Nosema …. And very hard on the bees. Again, after having locally adapted bees, having high quality of nutrition is extremely important, and this basically means bees come first.

Honey [00:21:00] is their natural food. So I, as a natural beekeeper, only harvest from them what they can share as surplus. I never take from them something that they depend, depend on for survival. This is number two, quality of nutrition.

Number three, disease pressure. Many times the bees will suffer or even die during the winter, not because they physically freeze to death. As we discussed, they can fairly well regulate the temperature. But they have a very heavy load of parasites during summer and especially in the fall. The parasites are especially the small tick called the Varroa mite that attaches itself to the bee and passes all kinds of infection to the bees. And the same way as a deer ticks can pass Lyme disease and many other nasty infections to humans. So the heavy load of these parasites can create infectious infestation in the hive. And [00:22:00] then this will be the real reason the bees are die in the winter.

Of course, many beekeepers and probably must beekeepers and understand that, and they treat their colonies against Varroa mite in the fall using chemical or other treatments. But the natural way of making sure that your bees are heading into winter without a heavy a parasite load is allowing them to go through what’s called broodless period or brood cycle break. That’s very important. This is how bees cleanse themselves of parasite in nature. When they swarm naturally, the old mother queen with half of the worker bees leaves the nest and they’re, while they establishing a new nest, there will be period of time when they will have no brood, no baby bees. Varroa mites and many other forms of disease propagate by feeding and multiplying on the brood. So if there is no brood for a period of time, then the population [00:23:00] of the parasite crashes, as if you had used some kind of medicine.

So these three things are very important. They don’t have to do with the actual winterizing of the hive, but they’re extremely important for wintering. Locally adapted bees, high quality of nutrition, and making sure that the colony is free of parasites, preferably because they experience their absence of brood. There are techniques you can simulate swarming, it’s called artificial swarming. Basically putting the bees through the same kind of broodless experience they would have in in nature.

[00:23:36] How to Winterize a Beehive

Leo Sharashkin: Alright, with this discussed, now let’s talk about the actual procedures for winterizing, the hive. Here, it depends on whether your hive is well insulated during construction or not. Interestingly, in the 19th century, all the grandfathers of American beekeeping, including Langstroth, the inventor of the hive that’s most [00:24:00] commonly used in America today, were, were all emphasizing the importance of good insulation in the winter if you live in the north. And it only makes sense if you live in the north, you will not be just relying on running your heater all the time. You will really be relying on good insulation in the roof and in the walls of your house, I hope. Otherwise it becomes extremely wasteful.

The same logic applies to the bees. Of course they can keep themselves warm by eating more honey, consuming more of their winter fuel, even if the box is not well insulated. But it creates two problems. First, they will burn through much more fuel than otherwise. They will eat much more honey, which is honey that could be your surplus honey for your enjoyment to share or to sell.

But the other problem physiologically that it creates for the bees, the more food they eat during the winter, the more waste products [00:25:00] they have in their intestine that requires discharging. But they’re not able to go outside the hive and cleanse the bowels because it’s freezing cold. So it creates this very difficult condition where to stay clean, they need to go outside and poop, but they cannot because it’s cold. So they have to choose between the lesser evil, and they may get to the point where because they need to eat more honey to stay warm, they won’t be able to contain all the waste inside them. And because they cannot go outside, because of the low temperatures, they will start pooping inside. And this creates big problems with all of this Nosema, the bacteria that creates diarrhea and the bees. It’ll not be sanitary, will not be clean. It will not be good for the health of the bees, only because there is insulation lacking in the walls that creates the environment in which bees need to consume more honey than they can afford consuming during the winter months.

So that means that if your hive was [00:26:00] not insulated well during construction, and there are free plans for building horizontal hives with very good installation on www.HorizonalHive.com. I build my house with one and a half inch of natural sheep wool in the walls. Again, this is all advice coming from the 19th century. You open all these books and they talked about insulating, insulating, insulating hives for the winter. Not only it’ll conserve the honey reserves, but another very important consideration here is that the higher the volume of insulation in the walls in the roof, the less condensation will happen on the surfaces. The air will be very moist, but it’ll not create the moisture problems. There will be no dampness because there will be no surfaces that are cold enough to cause condensation and water just dripping on everything, including on the bees.

If you don’t have a hive that’s already well [00:27:00] built with insulation in the walls during construction, it’s really beneficial. In many climates, it’s a matter of life and death for the bees to have the boxes insulated from the outside in preparation for wintering. The most important surface to insulate is the top because the heat rises inside the hive, and if there is condensation on the walls of the hives, at least this water is not dripping and running down on the bees. But if the warm air is condensing on the very cold surface of the ceiling of the hive, then all of this moisture will start dripping on the bees and killing a lot of them by chilling them. Imagine yourself taking, you know, a cold shower or being under the freezing cold rain in the winter. It’s really hard on the bees too.

So that means insulated top. If you use conventional beehives, just put two, three inches of [00:28:00] styrofoam. Insulate the walls. The natural way instead of styrofoam, which is a petroleum product and also not biodegradable. In the old days, they were using straw, which is readily available and very inexpensive, and you can also use straw today. If you buy a square bale of straw, you can separate it into what’s called shingles. It just a layer of this compressed straw, an inch and a half, approximately, thick. So you can put these shingles of straw all around your hive and hold it in place with the ratchet strap. It can be simple as that. Of course, make sure that the straw doesn’t get wet. Maybe put a piece of metal on the roof of your hive creating an overhang so that the water, when it rains or snows, gets past this straw without getting it wet.

But putting straw insulation around the hive is a very old practice. In fact, until the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century in Europe, many of the [00:29:00] hives were being built of straw. Everybody knows these pictures of basket hives. So these are these baskets woven from straw, and they were doing great job of keeping the bees cool in the summer and warm in the winter.

And another alternatives to straw, actually a more permanent one. In the old days, they were making kind of plaster from cow manure, straw, wood ash, and clay. And while it was still wet with some water, they were plastering the walls of the hive. And when it dries, it becomes kind of adobe, very, very porous, very good insulation. And it actually sticks to the wall of the hive well enough that it doesn’t require ratchet straps to hold it in place.

Again, insulation to the other things we discussed, like quality and quantity of food, is extremely important. But with this done, there is not much else for the beekeeper to do because in nature bees are not receiving any care in winter. If [00:30:00] anything, additional disturbance is not advisable because every time the hive is disturbed, not even open, but even if you knock on the wall or if you do any sound where the bees have to waken, it will elevate their metabolism. They will start humming there. They will become more agitated. And of course they will calm down after a period of time. But any disturbance just causes them consuming more food.

And a chronic disturbance, for example, a mouse getting into the hive, could actually kill the colony. Not by the mouse or eating the bees, but creating this constant disturbance, almost like sleep deprivation. When the bees cannot just hang in there and be calm when they’re always on the alert, but they cannot do anything about it because the temperatures are so low.

In addition to everything we discussed, including insulation, excluding mice from the [00:31:00] nest is extremely important. And this is as simple as covering the entrance with either half inch wire mesh or three eighths of an inch wire mesh so the mice cannot get in. Of course, this should be done before the first frost. Because if you do it after the first frost, you may actually have the mouse already inside the hive and you will just lock them in. Also, the reason for this particular size of the mesh, three eighths of an inch and half inch, is that it’ll exclude the mice. Actually three eighths of an inches preferable because there are some very small shrews that are small enough to go through half inch mesh. But you need to have these openings big enough for the bees to be able to get out on the warm winter day and do the, what’s called the cleansing flight.

So here it is. And then leave the bees alone, and you come in the spring and marvel at the [00:32:00] bees and the fact that they prevailed over the very cold winter and survived.

Jessica Mitchell: Mm-hmm. Yeah, it is so remarkable to see them come out of hi, or not even hibernation, but just that dormancy in their hive.

Leo Sharashkin: It’s also relevant. It’s a very long discussion, so I will only touch upon it here, and you can read more in that book, Keeping Bees with a Smile. Even the size of the frame matters. Conventional American frames, very long. The top bar is 19 inches long, and they’re relatively shallow, just nine inches deep. But in nature, bees live in hollow trees that are narrow and very, very deep, sometimes many feet deep. What it does is when the frame that you use inside your hive mimics the shape of natural calm inside the tree. When it’s narrow and deep, instead of being shallow and long, it creates an environment that’s easier for the bees to survive [00:33:00] in the winter, and they don’t have as much cold air circulating around them. And more importantly, when they’re on a narrow and deep frame. For example, the one I’m using called the Layens frame from Europe, and it’s 12 inches across instead of 19 for Langstroth. And it is 16 inch deep. So with this arrangement, when the bees cluster at the bottom of the frame, all of that honey is directly above them. And as they move up on the honeycomb, consuming this honey, it’s warm and it’s always accessible to the bees. The same amount of honey on a frame that’s shallow and longer will not be as beneficial for the bees because the honey will be to the side of the cluster. And to access that food, they would have to move not upwards, where it’s always warm and nice, but they would need to move laterally. And research shows that moving just two inches [00:34:00] laterally inside the wintering hive can mean a tremendous loss of heat. Two inches from the cluster that always stays warm the temperature may already be freezing cold ,and the bees will have trouble reheating and consuming that honey that has not been preheated, being positioned above the cluster.

So there is much more to that. You can read about how the successful wintering depends on the shape of the frame and encouraging the bees storing all their reserves above the cluster for the winter in the book, Keeping Bees with a Smile.

[00:34:35] Overwintering Bees Success: Horizontal vs. Vertical Hives

Jessica Mitchell: Does the success of overwintering in, in your experience, has that also changed depending on the structure of the hive, as in horizontal hives versus vertical hives?

Leo Sharashkin: You can overwinter, well, it’s better for the bees to have a structure that has a shape of the comb that allows bees to move just vertically up.

There was research done [00:35:00] in Europe showing that the Layens hives with their narrow and deep frames promote better wintering than conventional beehives that people, most beekeepers use in this country. But that said, you can always compensate it for it. For example, if you use conventional American hives, not only the shape of the frame is not ideal, but because the frames are so shallow, most beekeepers have to put two boxes for wintering. That means between the two boxes, there is a gap of almost an inch between honey in the lower box and honey in the upper box. And this is such a big gap that in the north, during a really cold spell, the bees may not be able to cross this gap from the lower box in the upper box. Amazingly, they can starve to death in a hive that’s full of honey, just because this vertical movement of the cluster is interrupted by the gap between [00:36:00] the two boxes.

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[00:36:47] Types of Frames for Winter

Leo Sharashkin: Yes, of course it’s better for the bees to have the kind of the frame that’s continuous instead of nine inches on the American frame. The frames I use are 16 inches deep and this [00:37:00] gives bees enough uninterrupted access to the honey that starving to death is just not going to happen.

But that said, of course, you can be very successful in keeping bees in conventional hive models by taking precautions. And as we discussed, just wrapping them and insulating them super well for the winter. To a certain degree, it’ll compensate for the less than ideal shape of the honeycomb.

Another thing that many beekeepers do in really cold climates is putting two or four hives on the pallet wall to wall and wrapping them all together in insulation. Also covering them with black roofing felt so that it attracts some sun energy during the winter to keep them warm. So with this arrangement, when you have four hives wall to wall, you are creating almost like an apartment block, where the heating bill is not going to be a sky because they’re sharing [00:38:00] some of their heat together inside this condominium.

Jessica Mitchell: Now, I had a couple follow up questions to our discussion of getting those bees ready for winter. So when we were talking about insulation and then putting up that, that wire to keep the mice out, all of that should be done before the first frost?

Leo Sharashkin: Correct. Again, the timing is such that you don’t want any chance of the mouse already being inside the hive. And the logic is as follows. Before the first frost, when the temperatures are still in the upper fifties and sixties, the bees are active enough that mice cannot really get into the hive, otherwise they would get stung to death. It is after the bees start forming the winter cluster and the lowering temperature outside, especially when it becomes very cold outside during the night, is triggering the bees going into this [00:39:00] tighter wintering cluster. This is when they become vulnerable. This is when they cannot readily leave the cluster to attack the mouse. So that’s the logic behind putting this, what’s called mouse guard, ahead of the frost.

[00:39:17] Ways to Support a Struggling Colony

Jessica Mitchell: Now, let’s say you are checking your hives as you’re preparing for winter and you notice that one of the colonies are a little weaker than some of the other ones. Are there any steps a beekeeper should take to see if there’s any way they can help support that colony a bit before winter comes? Or is it one of those things where you just do the best you can and then you just see what happens on the other side?

Leo Sharashkin: Yeah. Thank you, Jessica. It’s an excellent question. It’s actually another very important point in helping bees overwinter, and this is the amount of honey that you leave in in the hive should be sufficient for the particular size of the colony, but it should not [00:40:00] be too much. Actually, if you have a smaller colony and you want to be generous. You want to like give them the best possible chance of survival. It would be a grave mistake to leave them too much honey. When they’re a small colony, imagine having this much, much bigger cavity to heat and all, not only to heat, but our honey can absorb a lot of heat. It’s a heat sink. So it’s almost like putting them in a big cooler rather than here when they need to maintain higher temperature for a much larger volume of the nest.

That’s why when you winterize the bees, I can overwinter, really small colonies successfully by reducing the size of the nest to match the size of this particular colony.

Let me give you the example. So you open the hive in the fall and actually to minimize disturbance, I repair my bees for the winter at the very same time [00:41:00] as I pull honey. The reason for pulling honey in the fall is twofold. First, when I pull honey in the fall, it spent additional time inside the beehive. And all of this magic of the transformation of nectar into honey has been completed. All the enzymes have done their work, so it’s called ripe honey. It has ripened in the hive, has the required moisture content, and all of this transformation of nectar into honey is complete.

You cannot say the same about honey that’s pulled in the middle of the season because some of the honey may be ripe, but some of the honey, if you pull honey in June, may still be in the initial stages of being transformed from nectar into honey. It may not even have the moisture content of our ripe honey.

And if you pull it prematurely, it’ll ferment in storage. It’ll not be the same product as we call honey, period. So by pulling honey in the [00:42:00] fall, I’m able to pull completely ripe honey. By pulling it in the fall, I avoid disturbing the hive in the middle of the summer when the peak of their population. It’s a very unpleasant and disturbing experience, even for the beekeeper, let alone for the bees, to open the hive where it’s literally packed with the bees. All of these worker bees that were collecting honey in the summer, the majority of them will be dead by the time you pull honey in, say, October here in southern Missouri after the first frost.

So you open the hive and the population is probably a third of what it was in mid-summer, making honey harvest much simpler. And because they start clustering in preparation for the winter, many of the frames with honey that are your surplus will be practically abandoned. And pulling them does not provoke this aggressive defensive [00:43:00] response on the part of the bees.

Also, by pulling honey late at the same time as I prepare bees for the winter, I know exactly how much honey they have in the hive going into winter. I don’t need to take out all individual frames. Even just trying to leave the beehive by the corner will give an impression whether it’s heavy or whether it’s feels too light.

If you were to pull honey in the middle of the summer, you never know how much exactly you should leave because there is a big unknown. Honey in early July, how much more honey will be be able to collect in July, August, and September? And it really depends on the weather on the particular year. In some years here in Missouri, if there is no summer drought, then they can collect plenty during these three months. But if there is a bad drought, not only they will not collect anything, they will actually consume some of what they already have in the hive. [00:44:00] So the late harvest of honey has this benefit of being self-regulating. There is no gambling involved. There is no risk of miscalculating and taking too much honey in the summer and then having to feed bees sugar syrup in the fall.

If like me, you do natural beekeeping, that means no sugar feeding the bees and no chemical treatments or any medication of the colonies, then pulling honey in the fall is the way to go.

So, this is the answer to your question about helping the smaller colonies. The amount of honey that you do leave at this point depends on the size of this wintering cluster.

Imagine I open this longer box and I start pulling frames with honey. There will be many frames that will literally have no bees on them, or maybe just a few sluggish bees. And they will be shaken down into the hi. And you put this honey into a sealed box or [00:45:00] container. That’s your bounty, that’s your tax on the bees. But this is taxed responsibly without pushing the bees beyond the point, beyond their survival point and their capacity to provide for themselves in the window.

Alright, so as you go through the hive, you’ll come to some frames where there are many more bees. And they will become much more aggressive to you trying to take these frames. So when you see the transition from the frames that are abandoned by the bees to the frames that are covered by the bees, you know that these are the frames that the bees prepared for wintering themselves, and this is what you leave for them. So my rule of thumb is this. I leave the bees as many frames as they cover, the frames that have lots of bees on them, plus two full frames of honey, one on each side of this cluster, almost like sandwiching the cluster of bees with two walls of honey.[00:46:00]

Two reasons for doing that. First, according to research, this is exactly the structure of the wintering nest that bees prepare for themselves . Inside trees in the woods, they will have the cluster in the middle and two curtains of honey on each end. And the second reason for leaving these two curtains of honey on each end, this is additional food for the following spring. The bees may not even consume this during the winter, but in the springtime, if the weather is not favorable for foraging and they’re already raising their brood, they can go through a lot of honey very quickly, and leaving this springtime development reserve will not only contribute to good wintering, but will contribute to them being able to build up their strength quickly the following spring. No matter what the weather throws at them.

So to sum it up, for example, for a really small colony, it can be as few as three [00:47:00] frames, three Layens frames. This will be equivalent to four or five Langstroth frames. And for a very strong colony, it could be anywhere from nine to 11 frames. But again, leaving too much honey can actually kill a small colony by leaving them too much space to heat for the winter, and managing the microclimate in the nest more challenging.

[00:47:24] Protecting the Hive from Pests and Predators

Jessica Mitchell: Another question I was having, thinking about pests and predators that we had been talking about previously. Are there any other types of animals, maybe during the fall and winter that maybe in your experience you’ve had to take precautions around to protect your bees or are animals pretty quiet during this time, and it really comes down to things like mice and more of those pests inside the hives?

Leo Sharashkin: Of all forms of wildlife, I lose the most of the hives to bears. And the good [00:48:00] news about bears is that they hibernate for the winter. So they can harass your bees during the summertime, but not so much here in the winter.

However, it’s always a very good precaution to make sure that your hives cannot be accidentally just knocked over by animals or even you backing in your driveway with your vehicle or children or farm animals, cows, horses, et cetera. We had a hive that was knocked over by our horse once. It was in the summer, fortunately, so the horse was not hurt and the hive survived. But still, just take precautions so the hive cannot be knocked over. If it is on the stand, it needs to be a very sturdy stand and preferably the hive box, whether you use horizontal hives or vertical hives, they need to be well anchored. For example, by ratchet strapping it to the support.

Just recently, I [00:49:00] had a hive that was knocked over by a bear. The bear couldn’t get in because the hive was strapped to its stand, but it overturned the stand, and unfortunately, it landed on the front wall and completely covered the entrances so the bees couldn’t get in and out. And the colony perished because they just suffocated there with the entrances blocked.

Especially if you have bears, not so much important for the winter, but during the season, it’s important to make sure that the hive cannot be opened, which ratchet strapping is sufficient. But also that it cannot be knocked over its support. That means either having, say, T-posts driven in the ground or some pieces of rebar driven in the ground and use some pieces of wire to tie the legs of your stand to that, or use a few cinder blocks.

But one of the most reliable and cheap alternatives, even though it doesn’t look [00:50:00] as pretty, is taking a standard 40 by 48 inch wooden pallet and strapping your hive to the middle of this pallet. It is such a big area of support that any animal that happens to bump into the hive, either accidentally or with the intention of breaking in like the bear, they wouldn’t be able to turn it over.

Other than that, of all the pests or parasites that are harmful to the bees, mice are really the only ones to worry about in the winter. Because say, ants that can be troublesome for the bees, they are dormant in the winter as well. And skunks and the possums eat the bees not inside the hive but outside the hive at the entrance. So because there will be no bees and no bee traffic going through the entrance, skunks and the possums don’t really create any problems for the hives in the [00:51:00] winter.

Take this precaution against the mice. And again, I’d like to emphasize that the very reason we need to do it is because we keep our hives relatively close to the ground. In nature, bees live in hollows inside the trees, maybe 10, 20 feet off the ground, and it’s not as easy for the mice to find this opening and make it their own home. That’s why the bees inside the trees don’t need to have this special half inch mesh installed to protect their nest. But because it would not be very practical for us to have our hives elevated 20 feet in the tree, it’s done in some cultures around the world, but it’s not as convenient and not as safe as having the hives closer to the ground. We need to compensate for this departure from the natural blueprint by giving be some extra protection.

[00:51:53] Can You Open Hives in Winter?

Jessica Mitchell: Now we talked about insulation and the importance of keeping that some sort of [00:52:00] airflow so the bees don’t suffocate and, and really keeping that balance over the winter. In your experience, is there ever a situation where a beekeeper needs to open up their hive further to inspect them, or in those scenarios, is it just dooming the bees to potentially die as a colony?

Leo Sharashkin: Good question. Thank you. And no, the hive can be opened in the winter if you have to. Even in freezing cold temperatures, bees will probably not perish just from you exposing them to the cold temperatures because, as we discussed, even if it’s minus 30 outside, the bees are still able to maintain 50 degree temperature on the surface of the cluster, which is quite spectacular. 80 degree difference.

So the same will happen if you were to open the hive in the winter. They will just get into tighter cluster. They will rotate between the surface of the cluster and the [00:53:00] core of the cluster more frequently to maintain the level of heat that they need. But opening the hive for five, 10 minutes, even when it’s cold, even when it’s snowing, probably is not going to hurt the bees in itself.

But the good news is that if you did all the preparations for the winter properly, especially if you work with locally adapted cold, hardy stock, if they have high quality food and sufficient quantity, there is really nothing for you to worry about and no reason for you to open the hive anytime in the winter.

Pretty much the only time that I hear people have to open the hive towards the end of the winter, say late February, is to make sure the colony has enough food reserves. So beekeepers may open the hive to check whether they need to put more sugar into the hives. So this is an important procedure for beekeepers who practice conventional [00:54:00] beekeeping, who feed their bees sugar into the winter, and who are prepared to give them more sugar in the spring.

If you leave sufficient reserves of natural honey in the fall, you never have to open the hive in the winter, and you can rest assured that bees cannot eat more than what they really need. The reserves you leave in the fall will be sufficient.

[00:54:23] The Important of Using Locally Adapted Bees

Leo Sharashkin: But here again, I need to go back to the importance of using locally adapted bees. Do you know why it’s important for many beekeepers to check their hives in February when it’s still very cold, to make sure that they’re not hungry? Well, part of the reason is that many of these beekeepers use southern bees, like the Italian bees, in the very cold climate. And the timing of the start of brood rearing is genetically encoded in the bees.

So if the bees are locally adapted, they will not be raising brood in the middle of December or [00:55:00] January because this brood is not really needed this time of the year. When these bees become adult bees, they won’t be able to fly out and visit flowers to forage on the flowers. So brood rearing in locally adapted colonies, stops. Here in southern Missouri, it stops in October, pretty much at the time of the first hard freeze, and it’ll not resume until February, when there are warmer days with temperatures up in the sixties. So from early November until early February, there is zero brood rearing, which is great because it does not require bees to elevate the temperature to 95 degrees inside their cluster for incubating the brood.

They do not go through a lot of food because brood rearing, feeding the larva that gains so much weight, is extremely resource intensive. Finally, they’re not producing the unemployed army [00:56:00] of foragers at the wrong time of the year. This will be when you’re working with locally adapted bees. But if you have commercial, southern bees. Say, you purchased a package of bees from Georgia and you live in, in the north. Then, if that queen that’s being programmed to behave as if the colony was in Italy, where even in February it’s already warm as the beginning of the spring and is justified to have a lot of brood production already at that time of the year. So open your hives in February and checking to see whether they may need additional feeding is part of this conventional beekeeping when you work with the non-local adapted bees.

And then, yeah, if you have the bees that can be rearing brood in the dead of the winter, they can go through a lot of their reserves there. And then potentially starve in late February, early March. But this is pretty much the only reason why [00:57:00] beekeepers would want to open their hives. And again, that’s another of the procedures that can be totally voided through natural beekeeping approach. And the natural beekeeping approach number one foundation of it is working with local bees. Everything else, as you see, you know, from this discussion, logically falls into place if you start with the bee stock that is adapted to the local conditions.

[00:57:25] When to Stop Overwintering Bees

Jessica Mitchell: Well, couple other little wrap up questions I have as we’re wrapping up our discussion with overwintering bees.

So we talked about, you know, the time of year to start preparing your hives and making sure they’re ready for winter. Approximately when in the spring or tail end of winter is typically the time that beekeepers can start to, you know, remove some of that insulation, that extra insulation, or check up on their bees and, and see if they’re done with their wintertime and are, are ready to go back [00:58:00] into spring?

Leo Sharashkin: Mm-hmm. The mouse guard can be removed after bees start being active in the spring. Mm-hmm. Once they start flying actively for about a week when the temperatures are in the upper fifties and lower sixties, then the winter is over. You see them bringing pollen from the first blooming plant somewhere in the forest. So you can remove the mouse guard.

Ideally you want to leave the insulation though, even if you start visiting or opening the hives, checking on the bees. Ideally leave the insulation until the last frost of the spring. So for me, this means that many years bees start being active in early March. I will visit the hive the first time, check the state of the brood rearing in the colony in mid-March to late March. But I leave the insulation on until late April because the nights are still cool and it’ll save the [00:59:00] bees a lot of energy. They can raise their brood, still enjoying this good insulation and protection from the cold nights.

Also, I wanted to mention something we didn’t cover when talking about preparing be for the winter. When they do it inside the winter nest in the wild. They coat the cracks in the palm with propolis. This is the resin that they collect from all kinds of trees. With sap or poplars, with twigs that are coated in resins. It has a twofold benefit of creating a surface that has antibiotic properties. It kills germs. But also it’s like caulking when winterizing your home. You make sure there is no draft of air, cold air coming through the winter. So this envelope of propolis will be maintained until the warmer weather comes in. The bees can even use entire curtains made out of propolis to narrow down the [01:00:00] entrance to the size that they need. Just to let enough air for respiration and ventilation, but to minimize it, to minimize the heat loss.

So at the same time as you prepare bees for the winter, it’s your chance to, to harvest some of the propolis. There are special propolis collectors that you can see on www.HorizontalHive.com that you put there maybe six weeks before the first frost as a divider inside the horizontal hive, or as an inner cover on top of the frames on your vertical hive. It’s a divider put in down after the last frame in the horizontal hive, and it’s an inner cover put on top of the frames in a vertical hive. If you do it six weeks before the first frost, in addition to sealing the rest of the nest, the bees will put this propolis collector openings, a lot of that propolis that you will be able to harvest.

Natural response of sealing all of the cracks [01:01:00] is one more thing that will keep them warm and snug through the winter. And when you see that the entrance of the hive that maybe was left with a tiny little opening the size of one bee, maybe three eighth of an inch across and the rest was propolis. When you see that the bees start dismantling this wall of propolis, enlarging the entrance, this is the signal to you that they themselves now recognized that the winter is over, and they’re opening up more of the door area for better traffic in preparation for the new foraging season.

And you know, for me, every time looking at the colonies that survive the winter and with the bees flying and buzzing and bringing in the first pollen and taking out the disease bees from the hive and dropping them outside the entrance, it’s always this feeling of celebration of life over [01:02:00] death. And it’s quite a miracle to witness it for a colony that you recognize had to maintain such a high temperature through the winter with relatively little protection.

Imagine yourself having to spend the entire winter surrounded by all of the cold. To us, it’s almost unfathomable, but bees are able to pull it off. And I hope that the topics we discussed today will help more beekeepers to successfully prepare the wintering and have very good survival rates.

Jessica Mitchell: Absolutely. I think it will be very helpful for our listeners. I think we touched on a lot of good things.

Leo Sharashkin: The only final thought is that once the bees emerged from the winter, that’s the beginning of the new season. What you did in the fall actually goes hand in hand with creating good conditions for them to succeed in the following year.

For example, all of that extra surplus honey that we pulled from the hive in [01:03:00] October, we put in a special spinner called honey extractor, and we remove honey without destroying the honeycomb. So at that point, when the bees start being active in the spring, that’s the time to take some of these, what’s called dry comb, and put it back into the hive. It gives bees room for the queen to lay more eggs and produce more brood, to build up the strength of the colony in anticipation of the new season. So that’s the beginning of the new cycle. It just keeps repeating itself.

But no, I think it was a great, thank you, Jessica for all the wonderful well thought out questions. It feels like we covered a lot of ground when talking about how to keep your bees happy during the wintertime.

[01:03:46] Resources from Leo

Jessica Mitchell: Yes, absolutely. Well, thank you so much for joining us today, Leo. We’ll put the links to your Horizontal Hive website on our show notes and links to your previous podcast with [01:04:00] us.

Leo Sharashkin: Yeah. And also, meet me in person and talk to me and listen to my lectures at the three upcoming Mother Earth News Fairs in 2023. I will be speaking at all three of them in Texas, Kansas, and Pennsylvania. So you can look up the schedule there, and hope to see at one of these events. The information about them is of course, Mother Earth News website. And also on www.HorizontalHive.com, where there are links to additional events, including my two-day natural beekeeping classes right here at my honeybee sanctuary in the Ozarks of Southern Missouri.

Thank you.

Jessica Mitchell: Amazing. Thank you.

[01:04:43] Podcast Credits

John Moore: Thank you for joining us and Leo for this conversation about preparing bees for a successful winter. For links to some of the resources we covered and so much more info, go to [01:05:00] www.motherearthnews.com/podcast.

Our podcast team is Carla Tilghman and Jessica Mitchell. Music for this episode is “Beer Blues” by Coy Discovery.

The Mother Earth News and Friends Podcast is a production of Ogden Publications.

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John Moore: If you’re local to Lawrence, Kansas, we want to invite you to join us at Self-Sufficiency Saturdays, happening every month through the end of 2022. Whether you’re taking your first steps in your self-sufficiency journey or refining the skills you already have, these workshops will connect you to the food that nourishes you and your community with the guidance of experts. Learn how to be self-sufficient while following sustainable and regenerative practices. And if you can’t make it in person, we have you covered. All these workshops will be available soon online so you can learn how to be self-sufficient wherever you live. Go to [01:06:00] www.motherearthnewsfair.com/self-sufficiency-saturdays to learn more.

Until next time, don’t forget to love your Mother.

Meet Dr Leo Sharashkin

Dr Leo Sharashkin is a full-time natural beekeeper and founder of the website Horizontal Hive. He’s editor of Keeping Bees With a Smile and Keeping Bees in Horizontal Hives, comprehensive books on natural beekeeping. He writes for American Bee Journal, Bee Culture, Mother Earth News, and other major publications. Leo homesteads in the Ozarks in southern Missouri, catching wild swarms and keeping bees in low-maintenance horizontal hives. He holds a doctorate in forestry from the University of Missouri and teaches natural beekeeping at his apiary, across the United States, and internationally.

Additional Resources:

Hear more from Leo in How to Be a Natural Beekeeper

To learn more about Leo and natural beekeeping, check out Horizontal Hive.

Our Podcast Team:

Carla Tilghman and Jessica Mitchell
Music: “Beer-Blues” by Koi-discovery

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The Mother Earth News and Friends Podcast is a production of Ogden Publications.