November 4th 2024
Fall is very much here in Bremerton and it's time to prep the bees for winter. We did not harvest any honey to give these hives the best chance at surviving winter. Both hives were still pretty active even though it has been rainy the last couple weeks. We still saw bees coming in and out with full pollen baskets! This was very unexpected but we're glad there are still flowers available for them to pollinate.
We determined this spring that last year's hives most likely died due to mites leaving them too weak to keep the hive warm and dry. This year we bought a mite treatment called FormicPro. It's a patty of substrate (sawdust maybe?) that is soaked in Formic Acid. It gets put between the boxes and the bees walk over it and distribute it throughout the hive. It's able to penetrate the wax cappings on the comb and kill mites that are on capped larvae. This is where the mites actually reproduce so it takes them out at the source rather than just killing adult mites. Both hives seemed to tolerate the mite treatment alright, it's sort of comparable to chemotherapy. It stresses the hive and can kill some bees, but ideally it kills the mites faster than it kills the bees. We had to be strict about removing it after 10 days so the hives didn't get overdosed.
The next step in winter prep is making sure the boxes are appropriately sized. Paris has almost completely filled their upper box so we expect they'll have plenty of honey to get through the winter. London hasn't filled their box, which is okay. We'll just have to give them a sugar brick to make sure they have enough to eat. The other problem with the empty top box is that is a lot of empty space for the bees to keep warm. We put down an "exit board" which has a triangular maze that lets bees exit but not return from the upper box. Once all the bees were out, Mason removed the upper box and put it in the freezer for safe keeping. This way, London will only have the lower brood box to keep warm and maintain all winter, with a readily accessible food source right on top of them. In the spring we'll bring their top box back out and they can pick up where they left off.
We also need to help insulate the hives. This is done by plugging up extra entrances and adding a bed of wood shavings to the roof. The wood shavings will prevent heat loss through the cold lid, while also helping to absorb any excess moisture inside the hive. We have to keep those bees dry and warm!
The typical rule of thumb is it takes a new beekeeper an average of about 3 years to learn enough to overwinter a hive. This is year three for us, so we're crossing all our fingers and toes hoping these hives make it through winter.
