Healthy-Sustainable-Regenerative Lifestyle 

Let It BEE Winter

When we think of honey bees, our thoughts go to spring flowers and blooms with honey bees flying back and forth from flower to flower.  In the fall going into winter is the best time to prepare for spring and keep your bee colony healthy and thriving.

David Proctor

 

 

 

 

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Fall Beehive Survival Steps

by David Proctor 

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 November 18, 2021

Urban Farm Lifestyle Magazine    Published Weekly

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Fall Beehive Survival Steps

With your last honey extraction, put the supers or frames you extracted back on the colony and let the bees reclaim the sticky bits left behind. 

After a day or two, leaving the cleaned frames in the super, remove the whole super used for storing surplus, honey. 

This leaves the three brood boxes, where your bees will spend the next few months.

 

Honey & Brood

 

Follow these (9) steps to prepare your beehive for winter so your bee colony will be ready for spring.
 
Fall and Winter Management

• Mouse guards in place
• Enough good food
• All medications removed
• Colony tilted
• Windbreak in place
• Inner cover propped up
• Outer cover secure with weight on top
• Feeders removed
• Screened bottom board cover replace inside

Mouse Guards

Be sure mouse guards are in place. 

The expandable, metal types with holes rather than a slot are by far the best. 

The wood guards have slots that may not keep out a determined mouse.

Enough Food

The bees will need about 60 pounds of honey stored for the winter. 

If the amount is insufficient, a sugar syrup mix will need to be prepared for the hive. 

Mix a thick 1:1 syrup – one part sugar to one part water. 

The thick syrup does not induce a build-up, but rather storing behavior from the bees. 

Measure by the amount of sugar used.

When finished feeding, the stored food should be at the sides of the broodnest and above the broodnest.

The broodnest should be mostly in the bottom two boxes. 

Honey should be in the outer two frames, plus some in the frames next to the outside frames. 

Burnley Farm Apiary

 

The top box should be almost all stored honey.  You will need to monitor this during the winter.  If the bees are moving to the top they are running out of food.

All medications removed

Since Varroa mites are being monitored all through the summer, you may not need any treatments in the fall.  The mites will be easier to spot since the colony will become smaller going into fall and winter. 

If you do need to treat, use formic acid treatment. It will knock down adult mites and will damage the mites in cells also.  Do not forget to check for diseases.

Colony tilted
If you haven’t already, now is the time to tilt your colony forward just a bit by raising the back about an inch. A one-inch thick board works well. 

The colony should have this forward slant so that melting snow or winter rains don’t run into the colony and collect on the bottom board.

Windbreak in place

If your colony doesn’t have a good windbreak, you can build a temporary one to help.  A stack of straw bales on the windward side is one way, as is a temporary fence of horticultural burlap and a few fence post.  

Inner cover propped up & outer cover secured

Turn the inner cover so the flat side is up.  Then, between the inner cover and the edge of the top super, place a pencil or any block of material that raises the inner cover about 3/8^th of an inch. 

Replace the inner cover and the cover over that when complete.  Add a brick to hold the cover in place for those windy winter days. 

This will help with ventilation, which lets carbon dioxide and the warm moist air from the bees keeping themselves warm escape.
 
Feeders removed

By late fall, at least a full month before winter arrives according to the calendar, treatments should be complete and all assistance activities should be over.

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Check It Out!

 

by Lauri Calloway

 

Honey Pumpkin Bread

I have prepared many loaves of sweet bread over the years…pumpkin, banana, blueberry, apple, and zucchini to name a few. They were all delicious. And…quite sweet. Most of these recipes call for nearly two cups of sugar, either brown or granulated, or both. So, when I saw a recipe for honey pumpkin bread on the website honey.com, I was intrigued. Honey is the only sweetener used in this recipe.

 Warning: If you like your pumpkin bread to be really sweet, this is not the recipe for you. However, if you want a tasty alternative using only honey as a sweetener… no sugar added, with the lovely flavor of spices, pumpkin, and honey, give this a try!

I prepared this recipe with some modifications. You can find the original on honey.com.

Honey Pumpkin Bread

1/2 cup (one stick) unsalted butter
11/2 cups honey
1 15 oz. can solid-pack pumpkin
4 eggs
4 cups flour
4 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
2-1/2 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice
1 teaspoon cinnamon
3/4 cup chopped walnuts (optional)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease or spray with vegetable oil spray, two 9x5x3 inch loaf pans.

Cream softened butter and honey. Add the canned pumpkin and mix. Mix in eggs, one at a time, until well-incorporated.

Sift dry ingredients together and stir into the above mixture. Mix well. Stir in walnuts, if desired.

Divide batter equally into two loaf pans. Place in preheated oven and bake for 45 minutes to an hour. Insert a knife into the loaf near the end of the baking time. If it comes out clean, the loaf is done.

Allow loaves to cool about 10 minutes in the loaf pans, then take them out of the pans and cool on a wire rack.

Cut bread into 2-inch slices, and serve with whipped cream sprinkled with cinnamon, if desired.

 

Butter & Honey

Mix Ingredients

Dry Ingredients

Two Loaf Pans

Bread

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