The Hives in Winter...

I'm intrigued, Madasafish. What types of hive do you have?

I'd love to have bees, mainly because of me being a relation of Pooh Bear and I'm addicted to honey

8x Langstroth jumbo hives
4 x Langstroth jumbo 5 frame nucs
1 x Top Bar Hives (occupied)
3 x mini mating nucs - trying to ooverwinter them

Liking your apiary - we have had more snow here I think, several large branches snapped out of my plum trees. Fingers-crossed my bees will be OK. My hives are scattered higgledy-piggledy around the garden, so a rather different set-up to yours.

Looking quite buzz-y. Ok it is winter, so not so much buzz, but a lot of hives.

Interested to know why you went with the Langstroth jumbo hive.

I've been thinking about keeping bees, but not done anything yet. Think it is called research stage.

Do they have door numbers?
Think I read somewhere that if you have rows of bees, you should identify hive to make it easier for the workers to return to correct hive and prevent bee drift to next one.

One of my favourite quotes is....

"A day without a friend is like a pot without a single drop of honey left inside".

I decided to minimise the amount of lifting boxes . So I needed one brood box big enough to cater for almost any size of colony.. Standard National hives are too small so you need two brood boxes which means lifting one for inspections...See Page 4 of http://www.biobees.com/library/hive_...r_hives_UK.pdf

I also decided to cut costs by making nearly everything myself --- Langs are easier to build being simple boxes.
The disadvantage is that few UK beekeepers have langs . but as I don't swap parts and could buy a big enough hardly used extractor cheap that hardly mattered..

In theory you need to paint hives different shapes of blue and yellow - the only two colours bees see apart from IR - but I only do that for mating nucs in summer when I can have 13 on the go..spread around the veg garden.

Lifting bee boxes is HARD work..in summer I had a stack of 5 supers on one hive and needed a ladder to lift off the top one which weighed approx 20KG.. A Full Lang jumbo brood box is c 45kg... I used to weightlift - but that was 50 years ago and I suffer from the odd dose of sciatica... Winter is a time when I do daily yoga/fitness exercises to keep my back in trim and stop sciatica recurring - it works quite well.
I hope to get a lot more honey in 2018 so have got to be fit for that...:-)

Edit: to minimise lifting and ease box handling, I made a lightweight hive stand (thinner wood) mounted on half-diameter plastic pipes with the curved bit towards the ground. This can be easily dragged along and boxes removed placed on it at stand height thus minimising lifting. And as it is portable placed to avoid lifting and twisting - the worst thing you can do to your spine...

Hey there,
I keep bees too only started a few years ago, I noticed you havent coverd your hives for winter, may I ask why?
Also I agree with you that the nationals are small. This winter I placed a brood box and supper to give them more room as some of the hives are huge but not ready to be split yet.

Your hives look great btw

I think covering bee hives is more common in colder places, like the northern USA for example. The only discussion I've seen much relating to the cold here has been about poly-hives, which many people reckon helps by insulating the bees.

My bees were flying quite strongly here today BTW - plenty of pollen around on the catkins.

Where are you based, Engineer354? There comes a point at which insulating hives is counter-productive: if they're warm, they're active at a time when there's not as much forage for them as usual. So they start eating through their stores. Unless it's very cold, I'm not sure it's always a good idea.

Hey Snoop,
Im based in the middle of Northern Ireland.
In my 1st year I covered them and they were ok and survived through winter, then last year I was told its better for the bees. Last I lost 6 hives all to the cold. they were all found huddled up in balls in the hive with plenty of stores.
Thats why this year we got good thick insulation to see how that fairs


Do you feed liquid of fondant at this time of year? I stick with the golden fondant from Simon the Bee Keepers.

All my wooden hives are covered all year with 50mm thick foil insulation on sides 100mm on roof. See pictures ( one with swarm) below.

This idea that insulation makes bees warm is unproven by research An insulated house is only warm because it is heated from human warmth or heating - and it takes a long time to lose heat .Ditto hives. Poly hives do better at heat retention than wooden..

Read https://oxnatbees.wordpress.com/2015/01/25/warm-hives/ for a summary of leading research presentation to beekeepers and
http://www.eigentek.com/11-08-2015-I...ailable%20.pdf

for his research paper. This has been peer reviewed and is now quoted by Seeley and other world leading bee researchers as the definitive research on hives, insulation and heat losses.

The man who gave the presentation D Mitchell is writing his PHD in physics based on the above and new research.
(I have a degree in physics and can just about keep up with what he writes as my last formal physics education was half a century ago :-(

There's lots of bees in the hives..judging by this one..

Well the local weather forecasts are for a prolonged coldish spell (min -6C so not bad compared to winters of 2010-11 and 2011-12 when we saw -16C) so I gave all my hives about 1.5Kgs of fondant and 0.5kgs of pollen feed (Bee Equipment's Ultra Bee).


Don't know how long the cold spell will last - the forecast for early March is for more cold - so I want to ensure hives build up for the April-May forage - mainly hawthorn and other trees.
There are lots of snowdrops still in flower - and some crocus- but even on warmer days it's been dull so I have seen hardly any bees flying let alone bringing in pollen.