Ask a Master Beekeeper - September 2020

Are your hives properly configured for winter?

Labor Day may mark the end of summer for beekeepers, but it’s likely that your bees have already begun making their winter preparations. The number of bees in the colony is long past its summer maximum and the bees are arranging their winter supplies within the hive.

What is the ideal hive setup for good wintering?

Whether you winter in single box, one box plus a super, double, or even, triple deeps, the principle is always the same: brood frames in the center with frames of stores wrapping around them.

In a typical double deep, the ideal is for the upper box’s frames to be completely filled with capped honey, with one or two frames containing pollen, or bee bread. The center frame or two may have a mix of honey, pollen or the last rounds of brood, or all the frames will be filled with stores.

In the bottom box, as the population in a bee colony naturally reduces at the end of summer, the area used for active brood production also gets smaller. The bees begin to fill the empty spaces in the outer brood frames with the last nectar and pollen of the season.

Illustration showing ideal placement of honey in three typical wintering configurations; from left to right: single deep, deep plus medium super, and double deep. Areas with capped honey indicated with gray shading.

When the foraging is finally ended for the year, the cluster will be in the center of the bottom box, surrounded on both sides with stores and underneath a full “attic” of honey.

This allows the bees in the cluster to feed themselves and keep warm through the long months of a northern winter. On warmer days the cluster will break apart and allow the bees to move over to access fresh supplies. And over time, if there is a second box on the hive, the bees will move upward into it. That’s why beekeepers want to see the frames in the upper box full of honey. You don’t want the bees arriving at a half-empty pantry as they will be reluctant to go downward again into the chilly lower box, even if there are still remaining resources there.

What can you do if you find your bees don’t have this ideal arrangement?

First of all, it depends on how early you discover this. If you have several weeks of a fall nectar flow ahead, the bees may still have time to get things squared away.

If you have drawn comb in the upper box, you can feed your bees 2:1 syrup to make sure the combs are fully-stocked. Don’t wait until the flow is over to begin to feed syrup, because by then it may be too chilly for them to take enough.

If your upper box doesn’t have a full set of drawn combs to feed into, perhaps you can juggle resources from other hives to make up a full set, and then feed syrup into the hive.

If one or more frames are undrawn on one side, but drawn and capped on the other, place these frames in the outermost positions (preferably in the lower box, moving a better frame to the upper box), with the unused side towards the outside. You can turn them around and move them towards the center next spring to get them evened out.

If the hive is smaller than expected, you can consider reducing the interior volume of the boxes using follower boards and foam insulation panels so that it takes fewer frames to fill each box. See this article for a description on how to do that.

It is often said that you should take your winter losses in the fall by combining weak colonies with stronger ones. Using the newspaper combining method makes this easy to do.

What if your hive is completely upside down, with all the honey and pollen in the bottom box and the brood in the upper one?

This can happen when there has been an extended period of queenlessness which was subsequently resolved. While queenless, the brood-use pattern was changed and the bees may begin to fill the lower brood box with stores. When the new queen begins to lay, she may only have room in the upper box. Given enough time, the bees could move things around, but a faster solution would be simply swapping the boxes, putting the one with the active brood area in the bottom position and moving the one with stores to the top.

Can you leave a super of honey on top of the brood boxes as extra insurance that the bees will have enough to eat?

Yes, and this is a common practice. The only downside is that in the spring you will have brood in the honey super, perhaps extending down into the upper brood box, as well. This multi-box brood area makes reversing your brood boxes in the spring a little more complicated. Of course, you must be sure to remove the queen excluder if you were using one below your honey supers.

Is it safe to move frames around this late in the season?

Some beekeepers believe that you should never move frames (or boxes) around at this time of year. Every manipulation involves the risk of accidentally injuring or killing the queen. At the end of the season, when getting a replacement queen may not be easy, extra care should be taken. But if you spot an issue that can be remedied by some careful frame, or box, management early in September, I think it’s OK to go ahead and do that. But the bees need time to sort out their own arrangements, so get whatever needs fixing done as soon as possible.