Flicker’s Lair Blog

Ever wondered what Bees do in the cold winter months?

They don’t hibernate as such but rather draw themselves into the lower chambers of the hive. Then the beating of the wings helps keep the hive warm. This was our first year with bees so there is always that thought to go out to the hives and just check that everything is okay, and I am no different from anyone new to bee keeping. This year I took that trip out to the hives just to check if everything was okay.

Sadly it was not; one hive was completely quiet when I moved the top to peak in. Rather than a happy buzzing I was greeted by a cold silence. As I removed the top I could see that the bees had been frozen in time. There were bees that looked like they had been frozen as they ate the summers store of honey. It was quite saddening to look at.

I am happy to say that it was not all gloom and doom as I slowly lifted the lid of the second hive I could hear that happy buzzing associated with a living colony. For the time being we still have one living hive. It seems that an icy blast of winter wind had frozen the one hive in a matter of seconds. This leads me to think that we may be better off moving the hive to a slightly more sheltered area of the garden that would provide some protection in the form of a wind break for the hives.

I’m already starting to think about the coming spring and summer and how my colony of bees will do this year. Will it be a good dry summer to help them grow into a really healthy colony? Will I be able to split the remaining hive into 2? Is it too soon to even be thinking of such things? Only time will tell. For now I think I might just look for a way to erect a wind break behind the hives; just to keep as much of the icy wind off of the hives as possible. Hopefully we’ll get a few sunny days that the covers can absorb.

In the meantime here are the two hives with their winter covers on.

Tags: bee hives, honey bees

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010 at 8:30 pm and is filed under Homesteading. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.