Strengthening a Weak Hive for Winter: Essential Steps for Winter Bee Health

Essential Steps for Winter Bee Health

As winter fast approaches, we need to get weak hives in shape for what can be a really tough season for our bees. Primary concerns are population, space, temperature control, moisture, and food. These five components can make or break a colony, especially one that is going in on the weak side.

One of the most common solutions to a severely weak hive is combining it with a stronger hive or even with another weak hive, giving it double the chance of survival. To read more about this, see “How to Combine Hives to Strengthen Them for Winter.”

For hives that are just on the weak side, you can do several things to get them in better shape for the unpredictability of winter.

Population and Space

Your primary goal is to go into winter with the largest population possible so they can maintain temperature control. Here are some tips to boost your population quickly on weaker colonies:

• Add bees/brood from a stronger colony: This is the easiest way to instantly increase population. Simply take a full frame of bees from a stronger hive and place it in the weaker hive. Or if you feel confident there are enough bees in the weaker hive to keep brood warm, then move brood frame nearing emergence (darker brown cappings). With this method you will have “new bees” for this hive in just a matter of days, which can be a great bonus for overwintering.
• Feeding pollen patties: This is a somewhat controversial topic this time of year, but I’m a firm believer in building health and building bees as long as I can leading up to drastic weather changes. I do recommend using the 4% Global patty, instead opting for the 15%. Think of it like a slow-release supplement. At 4% you will have a slower consumption rate and a steady buildup. At 15% you have a much faster buildup but much faster consumption rate as well, meaning you will have to feed more often. The 4% will give the bees the incentive to continue building brood while still benefiting from its nutrients. It’s like a protein bar for you and me! You want the fat bodies built up, their nutrients boosted, and their guts in good health—and this will do just that. Healthy bees are your goal. For whatever reason, weak hives tend to avoid pollen patties at times. If that is the case, read “Everything You Need to Know About Pollen Patties” An alternative to pollen patties is Stan’s Soft Sugar Bricks. These are great for getting your bees the nutrition they need. They not only contain real pollen and organic botanical ingredients, but they also contain Complete – a proven all natural bee food supplement.

 Manage space.

As populations decrease (and they will even with brood still being produced because more are dying than are being made), space may become an issue. The bee-to-box ratio should always (regardless the time of year) be in check, with not too little space (rarely a problem this time of year) and certainly not too much! Too much space any time of year can cause an overabundance of small hive beetles, create the inability to maintain proper hive temperature, and allow moisture to accumulate in the unoccupied areas of the hive. Typically, reducing a hive means going from two brood boxes down to one, such as when there are only a couple of frames of bees in the top box but space for them in the bottom box. You can do this one of two ways.

1. Shake the bees off the frames from the top box into the bottom box and store the box and frames for use in the spring.
2. Trade out some inactive frames in the bottom box with the active frames from the top box. This gives you the opportunity to equalize your assets, keeping only what is useful to that hive and storing the rest for another time. Remember, place brood in the center and resources to the outside.

Food

Honey stores.

One of the most important factors of overwintering successfully is keeping enough food on the hive. Depending on where you are located, this can be as little as 30 pounds per hive and as much as 100 pounds. Obviously, the climates that stay colder longer require greater quantities than warmer climates. Feed now! Avoid the mentality of “feed when needed” during cold months. Bees aren’t as likely to take cold syrup; therefore, build their stores now and they will work with what they have when they need it then. Plus, it keeps you from having to feed all winter long. Convert your syrup to 2:1 now (two parts sugar to one part water) or feed premade syrup (it’s even thicker). This is easily stored even if left uncapped.

Utilize stored honey supers.

This is a great time to pull stored honey supers into play that you put back because they weren’t fully capped for extraction or inadvertently were left on while a mite treatment was administered. Either way, it’s great to just place a full honey super on top of a hive to overwinter. This can be done at any time throughout late fall or winter. Note: This doesn’t create a space issue. As long as it has honey in the box, it actually acts as an insulator for the hive. But when it is consumed, consider removing it to avoid the loss of heat into the now-empty cavity, around the first of the year.