Overwintering in Canada - so much conflicting advice!

Beekeeping - Basics Wintering your Flow Hive
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Hi everyone!

New beekeeper here, got my first flow hive this spring. I’m looking for some advice on over-wintering my hive. I’ve read through the forum and there is so much conflicting advice out there, it’s hard to know what to do. Based on what I have read, I’m leaning towards the following:

  • Remove super and over-winter single brood box
  • Replace screened bottom board and pest tray with solid bottom board
  • Reduce entrance
  • Build a hive quilt to place under the roof (with no upper ventilation holes)
  • Wrap hive in insulation/wind breaking material

Just looking for advice on if this is a solid plan or I am dooming my bees. Any input is greatly appreciated!

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Hello and welcome to the Flow forum! :blush:

The advice may appear conflicting because there are so many climates involved. Some forum members have tropical or subtropical climates, some have temperate, some mountain, some desert etc. Then add in urban vs rural. Well, you get the picture! :wink:

For new beekeepers in cooler climates, I would always suggest overwintering in double brood boxes. It is probably too late for you to do that now (nectar flow is mostly over for the season), but next year, I would let the bees fill a second brood box before adding the super. The reason for double brood is that it makes the hive much more robust, and is forgiving of beekeeper forgetfulness/absence. With single brood, you are going to need to monitor their supplies closely, and feed them carefully to make sure that they don’t starve over winter. I believe that @Doug1 successfully uses single brood in Canada, but his setup is different from yours, and he is very experienced. Perhaps he can chime in too.

For now I would say, yes remove the super. Yes, use a solid bottom board and reduce the entrance. Hive quilts are a great idea too. It will be important to use really good insulation around the hive, and even consider an upper entrance, especially if you get enough snow to block the usual entrance for more than a few days. The other thing to think carefully about is a varroa treatment plan before you cozy them down for winter. One of the biggest causes of overwinter colony loss is varroa, so it is worth being careful about this.

I hope that helps, and please ask more questions if anything needs clarifying.

:blush:

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@Dawn_SD as always offers sound advice. I’ve never run double brood box hives, but I live in gentler climes.

My comment is about the importance of insulation. In nature, bees often establish themselves in the hollow of a tree, usually quite high up. The entrance is usually quite small. The “walls” of such a hive can be 100mm , 200mm thick or more, providing exceptional insulation against the outside conditions. The small entrance, high above ground level, allows easy protection against predators and excellent control of the temperature and humidity within.

Such a hive shares attributes of a well designed house: high R value insulation and no drafts equals greater energy efficiency and lower bills.

We tend to house our bees in the worst version of a tree hollow imaginable. Ridiculously thin walls and roof, wide entrance, close to the ground. The cost to the bees is high energy bills measured in honey consumption and shorter lifespans as they vibrate their flight muscles to generate heat to replace the heat lost through the walls, roof and wide entrance.

In a double brood box hive, the bees tend to form a football shaped cluster surrounded by honey stores. The combination of honey and wax provides extra insulation, compensating slightly for the thin walls of the hive. Reducing the entrance definitely helps conserve energy.

As the warm moist air rises to meet the cold surface of the roof, condensation forms and can drip down onto the cluster of bees. This is often fatal to the colony.. Condensation on the walls is a useful source of water, though.

Snow provides insulation, but adding insulation first is best. The more, the better. As Dawn said, preventing snow blocking the entrance is critical, so a top entrance may be the solution, though having two entrances can cause draughty conditions. I’ve wondered about installing a tube to the reduced bottom entrance that rises above the potential snow depth, but I don’t have the conditions to conduct such an experiment.

Anything we can do to compensate for the poorly designed tree hollow in which we house our bees, will increase their winter survival rate.

Mike

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