Archive Special: Preparing for Winter (251)

Episode 251 – Archive Special: Preparing for Winter

Jim Tew: Hey, listeners. here's a segment we enjoyed doing. It's an archive segment that we thought you would like to hear again. On several previous segments, we've talked about things that we should possibly be doing to prepare for winter, and now it's time to implement those things and others, too.

Kim Flottum: It's finding the stuff that I need to do first.

Jim: I understand that. I understand that, Kim, getting it all together, getting ready. It's hard to believe snow's coming and blowing and going to be cold. Hi, I'm Jim Tew.

Kim: I'm Kim Flottum.

Jim: We're coming to you today from Honey Bee Obscura, where we're talking about what it takes to help protect your colony for winter, things you can do and not do.

Announcer: Welcome to Honey Bee Obscura, brought to you by Growing Planet Media, the producers of the Beekeeping Today Podcast. Join Jim Tew, your guide through the complexities, the beauty, the fun, and the challenges of managing honeybees. Jim hosts fun and interesting guests who take a deep dive into the intricate world of honeybees. Whether you're a seasoned beekeeper or just getting started, get ready for some plain talk that'll delve into all things honeybees.

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Jim: Kim, first, through our history in beekeeping, we have waxed and waned in these winter preparations. Now we're back to helping our colonies as much as we can with insulation, protection, dryness, warmness, whatever, because our bees are expensive and are more valuable to us than they used to be.

Kim: Yes. Let me put it this way, Jim, you're exactly right, we're getting back to it, and I want to talk about what winter is really. Your bees are going to need some level of protection if it's so cold you can't wear shorts on Christmas Day. Any further south than that and you're probably okay, but anywhere north of that, you're probably going to need some level of protection.

Jim: That's interesting, Kim. If I go out on Christmas Day in shorts, my long-suffering neighbors are probably going to be saying, "He's doing it again. He's doing it again. He's out there on Christmas Day in his shorts." I know what you mean. I know what you mean. Another person somewhere through the years has said, "If you are comfortable, your bees are comfortable."

Kim: That's a good one. Yes. I agree.

Jim: In a sense, that's what you're saying.

Kim: The simplest thing you can do, and the easiest, is, if nothing else, put up a windbreak where's the primary direction, and you're going to surround your hive on three sides, maybe even to give it a little protection from that cool or cold winter wind.

Jim: That is so true, because just my experience, just go stand behind the fence, even getting behind the tree line, just getting out of the wind. You can tell the difference just getting in the truck, never mind the heater. I'm just out of the wind. Yes, a windbreak is an easy thing to do, and it meets the criteria. If you're more comfortable behind a windbreak, then your colony is more comfortable behind a windbreak. That's an easy one to do for the most part.

Kim: I use bales of straw because I've got them and they're easy, and by the time winter's over, I got another use for them. That works well for me. Anything like you said works. After windbreaks, then people start looking at doing some kind of wrapping, some kind of thermal protection.

Jim: Oh, yes. That's that thing during the years, Kim. I didn't mean to step on you there, but that's that thing. I don't want to live in the past, but beekeeping has such a history of everything. If we're talking about this wintering and years gone by, all of this boxing and putting four hives together, so much has been done, but yes, you're exactly right. Cover these things in straw, pack hay around them. Beekeepers were doing that 100 years ago, and beekeepers are doing it today.

Kim: Yes, but that evolved after a while. Not a long time ago, when I first started, the rule of thumb was to wrap them in tar paper, roofing paper. It was black, so it absorbed the sunlight during the day, and it warmed up the hive a little bit, supposedly. Nothing else served as a better windbreaker.

Jim: I remember. I know commercial beekeepers in Ohio. We don't have them anymore. They've crossed over now, but they had a specific procedure for a guitar paper cut to specific sizes. Everything about the tar paper was known. Then, when they wrapped, wrapped, wrapped, they did the artistry of wrapping a Christmas gift. It was perfectly wrapped and folded, and then everything was put right back on, and a little hole was torn for the bottom entrance and the upper entrance. They did move on.

When you look at it, you think, "It's very neatly done," but it's just a piece of tar paper. How much does that really help? I don't know. I didn't know then. I don't know now. They were serious about it. Every year, they put a lot of effort in wrapping with a single layer of tar paper, and we still do it now in many cases.

Kim: Then it moved on from tar paper. There's a plastic sheet with a quarter inch of insulation on one side that people are using also. You can use that, and that acts like the tar paper when it breaks the wind, and it's black, so it helps. A little bit of insulation is supposed to help a little bit. I think that's probably what it does a little bit.

Jim: Yes. Insulation, isn't it? I suppose anything is better than nothing in most cases. I thought and wondered if we shouldn't go to these big box construction supply stores and look around and see what insulation materials are available there, because this blue insulated foam, can you just cut blocks of that and put on the outside of a beehive? I see beekeepers occasionally doing that, but I don't know that it's a recommendation where you just improvise protective, insulated sheets that go around the colony. I don't know if you can do it or not.

Kim: Yes, you can. I've seen it done. Then there's just regular roofing insulation. You can do that plastic on one side and fuzzy on the other. It will keep your hive warm. That's what we were doing in Wisconsin, we talked about way back when. You can insulate them to the point where they don't even form a cluster. If you got 50 hives, that's probably unrealistic.

Jim: Is a lot of this packing and winter preparation the things that beekeepers with lesser numbers of bees can do? What can a beekeeper do with 3,000 colonies for winter packing? I think they just put them on trucks and head to Florida.

Kim: Yes. I think you're right.

Jim: I think that most of these high labor efforts are for beekeepers like me, 15 colonies of bees or so, and I could, in theory, do it. Yes, we can wrap, do something, buy something, put something around them, but we are now back to a place where many beekeepers and many beekeeping authorities agree that wrapping or doing something to help a colony is beneficial now.

Kim: One of the issues coming up is the fact that there are so many kinds of hives right now. Different sizes, different styles, that there's no one-size-fits-all piece of equipment out there. If you got a top bar hive, you got an issue. You got 8 frame, 10 frame, 5 frame.

Jim: Excellent point. Excellent point.

Kim: You either are looking for something really specific, my 8 frames versus your 10 frames, or you're looking for something that's, like I said, maybe one-size-fits-all, which would be a roll of house insulation or a roll of that plastic. That will fit anything you put it on.

Jim: You're making excellent points here.

Kim: There's the 10-frame bee cozy that fits on a 10-frame hive, but how high, and if you're used to wintering in 3 boxes or 4 boxes instead of 2 boxes, so a lot of things to think about on what you're going to pick.

Jim: Betterbee Bee Supply makes different types of wraps for different-sized numbers of frames of colonies, 5, 8, 10. We'll take a moment and hear from them right now.

Betterbee: Winter is coming. Prepare your bees for the cold months with Betterbee's insulating hive wraps, outer covers, mouse guards, hive straps, and more. Visit betterbee.com/winterprep for tips and tricks to help your hive withstand the harsh weather.

Jim: Do something. If we've got the colony wrapped, Kim, do you do anything with the bottom board? I've never really heard that you put something under the bottom board piece of insulation, styrofoam, or something.

Kim: All my hives are on hive stands, so they're raised up above the ground. I don't use screen bottom boards at all anymore. When I wrap my hives, I run my insulation down below the bottom of the hives. Underneath, I try and close it in, so you got a dead airspace underneath.

Jim: I don't do much on the bottom. I wonder if I should, but let's talk about bottom board some more, some other segment, because they're a necessary, but unloved piece of equipment. Most of us don't insulate the bottom, but we do insulate the tops. The commercially available bee supply companies sell insulated top covers. I've got one here that works reasonably well. In fact, it works well from Bee Smart-- Bee Smart Designs has an insulated top that is a single unit. It's ready to go. Take it out of the box, put it on.

We're really throwing around company names now, but people need to know where to find these. Betterbee has an insulated cover with a 1-inch piece inside the top. These are all new concepts for this time. They're not new concepts for old times where we use different things, but right now, you can buy insulated outer covers.

Kim: Those are put out because one of the big issues with wintering is ventilation. When you're bringing cold air in the bottom and having it leave the top, you've got cold air in your hive all winter long that the bees are having to deal with. An insulated cover helps that in that that cold air going up through the cluster, warming up, gathering moisture, hitting a cold cover, it will condense and rain back down on the bees, so you've got cold, wet bees all winter. This insulated covers makes that go away, and it just allows the air to escape without the condensation.

Jim: We're doing this in an artificial faction, but that's a different story for a different time. A beehive isn't really a natural nesting site for a bee colony, but it's one that they can use. We have a lot of experience using. That's there. One of the things that was old and now it's new again, Kim, and I need to tell you and the readers, I really haven't used this before other than two times, just playing, and that's these quilt boxes that go on top.

In the old days, I mean late 1800s, 1910s, 1920s, quilts were commonly used on the hive top. They were actually a quilt. Beekeepers would make reference to their wives using various kinds of batting, B-A-T-T-I-N-G, batting to make these quilts and to sew them so that they would fit the hive tops very closely. Then they would say that that would absorb moisture. These things were well established. Do you know anything about them, Kim? Any concept from the old books?

Kim: Before my time. I don't know. [laughs]

Jim: I understand that. It was funny that I found one of these old books where the guy was giving exact dimensions and telling you what to use so that when the bees wet it and it would shrink, it would still be the right size. It was very specific. In another old book, Kim, I read, "Why would you ever use these things? They're a piece of junk. The bees glue the quilt to the top bars, and then you have to rip them apart." The guy poetically said how the bees hated having their hives ripped apart. Yes, it's beekeeping, always do it. Yes, it's beekeeping, never do it.

These quilts are back, but they're basically different. There really is no quilt per se now, but there are boxes that go on top of the hive that are available with wood chips, wood shavings in them. Then you have a shim down below with a hole to let the moisture out, and then you have a shim above this box to let the moisture out. This top quilt box with shavings, no quilt, is supposed to insulate the hive and to hold the moisture that the hive is collecting.

I've read somewhere, Kim, that then that moisture is available to the colony when there's a shortage of moisture in the hive later in the season, but I don't know about that because if you get too much moisture, it's going to be soggy. I know you want to get involved in this because you don't like moisture in the hive, but these quilt boxes are new to me, and I know people are using them because they're available commercially and there's plans on the web for building your own. Shoot holes in all of that.

Kim: I'll go back to what you just said. Too much ventilation in a hive. You get any kind of ventilation, you've got to do something with the condensate that collects on the roof. You can soak it up in wood chips, or you can insulate the roof so that it doesn't condense. That's my first choice all the time, every time, is to reduce ventilation, reduce condensation, and keep the hive dry. I'll stick to what I've been doing. I've had good luck.

Jim: I have just been putzing around. How much can we go, Kim? Maybe later. Maybe later or another discussion. These expanded polystyrene hives, they're basically styrofoam boxes. Many beekeepers are now keeping bees in styrofoam boxes, so there's a whole different concept of insulation.

Forget wood, forget wrapping, forget everything because you're basically keeping your beehive in an ice cooler. There is that. It's insulation-- Find what works for you. You've got a lot of options available to you right now. When you have a lot of options available, that means there's no clearer way to doing it correctly. If you've got something that's always worked for you-

Kim: Stick to it.

Jim: -then I would say always do it. Then there is this one other group. That other group that I want to talk about are those beekeepers who can wear shorts on Christmas day in their apiary. Kim? What do they do? What do people do in warmer climates that don't have to worry about insulated hives or packing or whatever?

Kim: Make sure their bees have enough food all season long. I think that's the biggest concern is because if they're going to be active, they're going to be flying, they're going to be probably be raising brood. Make sure they have enough food. I think that's probably as far as you need to go.

Jim: They're going to have it easier in many ways, but I think you're exactly right. A lot more flying, a lot more food consumption than you might expect. People like me, I used to keep bees in those warm climates. You could always feed. If you're having to feed and if bees are starving, you can rest assured you're going to get robbing going. You had to always be cautious that you didn't get bees robbing each other in the yard where the colonies were close together on those days when nothing else is out there except what's in your neighbor's beehive.

Just so you folks know, we are aware that warm climates don't have all these issues, I think. Kim, I want to ask, deep South Alabama, North Florida, it's 100 degrees on those summer days, would an insulated hive top be helpful then not for cold, but for heat? I don't have the insert of that.

Kim: The people that have looked at it, and I'll go back to Sealy's tree trunk hive, it's perfectly insulated for winter and summer. You don't have a cold or a hot roof. The goal is to keep your ceiling the same temperature year-round, insulated in the summer against the heat, same insulation in the winter to keep the cold out and the moisture down, and the heat in.

Jim: If we happen to have any listeners in the South who actually have been using these insulated covers on the top and have an opinion, I'd like to hear from them because we worry about cold, but I wonder if, at times, we should be worrying about heat. I don't know, but that's a different subject for a different time. In essence, Kim, do something. You have a plan. As I reduce the size of my colonies more and more, I'm going to use insulation more and more and explore some of this top stuff and see if I can stay in the beekeeping business a while longer.

Kim: Well, good luck to you.

Jim: Good luck to you, buddy.

Kim: [chuckles] Take care.

Jim: Until next Thursday. I'll talk to you again. Bye-bye.

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