Wintering Of Bees And Early Spring Work Of The Beekeeper

2024 Author: Sebastian Paterson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:47

Quiet life of the apiary

Wintering of bees can take place in different conditions. Depending on the temperature of the air entering the notch, wintering is divided into cold and warm.

Cold wintering. It occurs either in permanent places, or under a canopy, or in closed rooms without heating. Sometimes hives are protected with casings, wrapped with insulating materials. Cold wintering can be called natural wintering.

Warm wintering. It occurs in specially equipped rooms (winter quarters, Omshanik) with a positive temperature up to + 6 * C.

Features of different types of wintering, their advantages and disadvantages:

Cold wintering is a risky undertaking. It requires special family training from the beekeeper. Food consumption during cold wintering is about twice as high as during warm wintering. It is risky to send families with a force of less than seven frames (435x300 mm) in a cold wintering in October.

For cold wintering, it is necessary to have insulated hives. During the winter in the wild, hives deteriorate very quickly.

There are also advantages to wintering in the wild - this is the flight of bees according to the weather. There is no need to move the hives from place to place. Cold wintering has no other advantages. All the tales of the vigor of bees hibernating in the wild are not confirmed by anyone. Cold wintering in the wild is a forced event. Cold wintering indoors is the best option for the Northwest region.

A warm winter is a gentle activity for bees. However, it requires a special room with a stable positive temperature and good ventilation. Even weak families winter successfully under these conditions.

With a warm winter, the hives are not exposed to destructive moisture outside.

A beekeeper organizing a warm winter for his families may have light (thin board) hives. However, such wintering requires a lot of work to move the hives both in autumn and spring.

Insulation and ventilation

Warming during cold wintering is extremely important. The hive cannot be re-insulated either during cold or warm wintering. It is always necessary to properly organize the ventilation of the hive. It is necessary to proceed from the principle: it is better to over-ventilate than under-ventilate the hives.

How to organize ventilation correctly? During cold wintering, the ceiling in the nest must always be airtight and well insulated. This is the key to good air exchange at low temperatures. Under no circumstances should any holes be made in the upper part of the socket, because this will lead to a grueling, energy-intensive wintering. During wintering in the wild and in a warm room, the upper and lower summer houses are left completely open in winter.

If your hive has only one bottom entrance, then a vent must be made in the bottom or back of the hive. The total area of the ventilation openings in this case must be at least 100 square centimeters. This is how all the hives in the world are arranged now. This is very important for the North-West.

Only reinforced bottom ventilation can effectively remove moisture and carbon dioxide at the lowest cost

During warm wintering, natural ventilation works less efficiently. Therefore, many beekeepers use nest opening. Although this method contradicts the very nature of a bee nest, it is to some extent acceptable. The best ventilation method is with supply and exhaust ventilation, when the lower and upper entrances are open. Since the entrances are located on the same plane, the "draft effect" is reduced. The method of ventilation through the bottom will also be effective. In this case, the area of the ventilation opening in the bottom can reach 600-900 square centimeters.

And I will also note: regardless of the wintering method, there is never a lot of insulation.

Five components of a successful wintering of bee colonies:

1. Wintering on physiologically young bees. To do this, it is necessary to start speculative feeding immediately after pumping out the honey and compressing the nest (in early August). This stimulates the uterus to lay.

2. Adequate amount of light carbohydrate feed. These include honey with a high sugar content. To do this, the family needs to feed in the winter at least 20 liters with warm and 30 liters during cold wintering of sugar syrup at a concentration of 1: 1.5. Sugar syrup feeding should always be accompanied by bringing pollen to the nest. It should be finished by early September. Relying on natural food in August is dangerous.

3. Mandatory preventive treatment of bees against nosematosis and varroatosis.

4. Properly organized ventilation

5. Mechanical protection of the entrance from the entry of mice. When wintering in the wild, entrances must be protected from wind blowing and birds. With any method of wintering, for any design of hives, the beekeeper, with its correct organization, has the right to count on a positive result.

Each beekeeper defines the wintering results differently. It depends on the type and design of the hive. In a polystyrene beehive with a top covered with a polyethylene film, it is easy to visually monitor the progress of wintering, and the movement of the club, and the emergence of brood.

As I feared, last winter, three out of nine of my families crumbled since autumn. The reason for this is the low quality of purchased fetal queens. This is how the families looked on March 16 last year before the exhibition in summer places. The photograph shows that the strength of the families is about seven streets. This is a satisfactory wintering result. Condensation on the film at the end of wintering is quite acceptable. Within two weeks, bees use it for their needs.

Spring works

If you use multi-body hives, early spring work in the apiary is quite simple. And they consist in replacing winter (mesh) bottoms with deaf ones. If necessary, you can conduct stimulating feeding with a small portion of syrup (0.5 liters per family) at a concentration of 1: 1 with the addition of a drug for nosematosis or stimulating agents (chloride or sulphate cobalt, etc.). The concentration of the drug is 8 mg per 1 liter of syrup. Such recommendations are available in the literature. It is very important that early spring pollen plants are near the apiary in early spring. These are, first of all, hazel (hazel), willow plants and, of course, mother and stepmother. If there are no such plants near the apiary, then measures should be taken to feed the bees with protein feed in early spring.

With the onset of warm days (temperatures above 15oС), it is necessary to conduct at least a partial examination (audit) of the families. This allows you to correct the negative consequences of wintering. The power of families needs to be leveled if necessary.

They may object to me: how, they say, take into account the opinion of numerous beekeepers about the need to compress the streets of bees in spring, remove unnecessary frames, etc. Of course, such actions will not harm the bees. But this is a very time consuming job. I prefer not to make adjustments to the volume of the nest in the spring. As the bees came out of wintering on 20 frames, so let them develop. The main thing is that in the spring the strength of the family should be at least 7 streets. In expanded polystyrene hives, this is not only permissible, but also justified. Well-known industrial beekeepers of the North-West and, for example, Yu. Vaaro from Finland do this. The increased volume of the nest in the spring allows the bees to self-regulate their strength, and, naturally, to occupy the volume of the nest as they develop. According to the hypothesis, this increases the biological limit of the family. That is, with a larger number of bees, the colony goes into swarming. For example,the hypothesis of "memory by bees of volume" was expressed by VP Tsebro from Pskov. It is confirmed by many professional beekeepers.