Winterizing the Hives, Part 1

It’s been a very difficult autumn for us this year, and I just haven’t had the time, energy or inclination to write much about the garden — or to actually do much in the garden. We’ve let a lot of things slide, and have only just gotten around to raking leaves and doing the general post-frost clean up today (even though said frost was almost a month ago now).

We have, however, diligently done our duty for the living creatures here, including the bees. Somewhere around Halloween we got the hives ready for winter by closing up the extra entrances and protecting the remaining door with hardware cloth so mice can’t get in:

We’re not at all sure that our hives have enough food stored to make it through the winter, even though both seem pretty strong. When our original hive swarmed over the summer, the ones that left ate all the honey in the original hive to be ready to make the journey. That meant that both the original hive and the new one were basically starting from scratch with winter food stores — an in August, too. They both managed to fill up several combs with honey and pollen since then, but I’m not sure it will be enough. 

So all fall we were feeding them additional sugar syrup to try to help them along. Once it gets cold, though, we can’t open the hive and let in drafts — and they’re pretty ornery about cracking the propolis seal they’ve been working on. So for our final day working the hives, we made them each a big fondant cake for extra food:

That’s pretty much just like regular fondant you’d make for a human cake, but it’s poured into a thick piece and held to the follower board with some hardware cloth. I also spritzed it with water scented with a few drops of rose essential oil to alert the bees to the fact that this is something yummy. 

The follower board is like the back cover of the hive, but you can move it to make a wall behind the last honeycomb they made. This reduces the amount of space they have to warm up with their body heat over the winter. It will also mean that this food is there for them as they move their tight winter cluster through the hive and get to the end of their honey stores. If we get a random warm day in the winter, we can check in to see if they have eaten it and need a refill.

If they make it through the winter, we’ll surely have to feed them in the spring to get them started, as they could starve until flowers bloom again. I’m not sure they’ll make it, but we’ll try our best to help them along.