I probably should have done this last month, but I took a few minutes this week to close up our hives for winter. Hive winterization involves adding a bottom board beneath the screened bottom and removing any boxes that aren't currently in use, with the purpose of both tasks being to make the hive easier to heat over the winter. Many people do the same thing in their domiciles, in fact --- if you really only use your bedroom and kitchen in the winter, why pay to heat the whole house?

Unfortunately (but unsurprisingly) I found the daughter hive empty when I went to remove the bottom box. Six weeks ago, I could tell that this hive was ailing, and even though though I tried to double down on feeding them, the bees didn't seem very interested in sucking up sugar water. In retrospect, I suspect the colony I was trying to feed was already gone at that point, with bees from our other hive flying over to suck down the sweet moisture. My guess is based on the fact that this hive didn't actually die out --- like the one we treated with powdered sugar last fall, the entire colony simply absconded, leaving only half a dozen dead bees behind.

So we're back down to one hive heading into the winter, and even that colony felt a bit light when I lifted the two top boxes to take out the cleaned-out box underneath. I definitely don't seem very good at keeping bees alive without chemicals and copious sugar water (and I'm unwilling to resort to the methods other beekeepers use to keep their hives humming). But we've got another trick up our sleeve for next year, so I'm not giving up!

Want more in-depth information? Browse through our books.

Or explore more posts by date or by subject.

About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



Want to be notified when new comments are posted on this page? Click on the RSS button after you add a comment to subscribe to the comment feed, or simply check the box beside "email replies to me" while writing your comment.

Powered by Branchable Wiki Hosting.