How To Care For A Beehive In The Winter

With cold winter weather upon us, most bee populations have taken to their hives to nestle down with their colony and their honey for the winter. The winter season is a harsh time for most of nature, but with the right winterizing supplies and preparation, your bees can make it through and be a strong hive come springtime.

As your bees prepare for winter, there are some beekeeping tasks you should be completing alongside the colony. Your bees rely on you for a safe, dry, and warm location to successfully endure the winter.

Here’s all you need to know about keeping your hives set up for success through the cold, dark winter months.

What is Overwintering?

Overwintering is the process of helping a bee colony survive through winter. Bees cluster to generate heat and reduce activity during cold months. Beekeepers ensure the hive has enough food, proper insulation, and ventilation while protecting it from moisture, drafts, and pests.

A healthy queen and a strong bee population are crucial for generating warmth and ensuring the colony survives until spring

Know Your Climate

When preparing your beehive for the winter months, it’s important to know what kinds of weather you’re up against.

Extra insulation is a major benefit for your beehive if your area gets extremely low temperatures. If you expect fierce winds, secure the hive’s lids or add a hive cover. You can also shield the base and any ventilation holes to prevent drafts from disrupting the bees.

Take into consideration whether you’ll face a lot of precipitation or flooding. Snow can act as a natural insulator, but your hives need to keep out any moisture to prevent excess humidity.

Being in tune with the climate and the various types of weather your bees may experience will help you to prepare the hive. While beekeeping requires a certain amount of effort, we can’t be too involved in preparing our bees. They know what they’re doing, but it’s important you do your part in ensuring the hives are prepared for inclement weather.

Set Up the Yard

Take a look at your yard and imagine it’s the dead of winter: Are your hives in the best spot to handle the winter months?

Make sure your honey bees are in a position that receives plenty of sunlight and as little wind as possible to help them through the winter months. Consider placing a windbreak—or utilize existing ones, such as a line of trees or shrubs—to protect your hive from the bitter winds in your region.

If you get excess precipitation or flooding through the winter, move your hive to higher, safer ground to keep it dry until spring.

If you’re expecting a lot of wind gusts, you can secure the hives with rope or bricks to ensure they won’t topple during heavy wind. Wind can damage hives, so if your area is known to be gusty during the winter, plan accordingly.

Examine the hive’s base and eliminate any excess vegetation so pests can’t hide beneath the hive or climb up to use it for shelter. Creating a safe, ideal space for the bees will ensure their well-being for the long winter, no matter how chilly it gets.

Using Double Nucs vs Single Deep Hives

In most cases, the choice between overwintering in double nucs or single deep hives depends on your climate, the strength of the colony, and your management preferences. While there’s benefits to using either option throughout the winter season, we’ll cover each of their main benefits below.

Double Nucs

A double nuc is a beekeeping setup that splits a standard deep hive body into two separate compartments, each housing a small colony, allowing them to share warmth during winter. The main benefits of this option are:

Ideal for colder climates and smaller colonies. Shared warmth helps reduce heat loss.
Easier for bees to cluster and regulate temperature in smaller spaces.
Good for building up multiple small colonies for spring.

Single Deep Hives

A single deep hive is a traditional beekeeping setup where a single, larger colony occupies one deep hive body, providing ample space for clustering and storing food.

Best for stronger colonies, providing ample space for clustering and food stores.
Simpler to manage, but smaller colonies may struggle to maintain heat.
Effective in milder climates or for robust colonies.

To summarize, double nucs are better for smaller colonies or colder climates due to the benefit of conserving heat. Single deeps are better for simplifying management of larger colonies in milder climates.

Reduce Hive Entrances

Weather isn’t the only threat in the wintertime. Rodents and other small creatures and critters looking for a wintertime shelter will see your beehive as the perfect spot—it’s warm, protected, and full of food.

Keep these intruders at bay by making the hive entrance as small as possible. Your bees won’t need a large opening while they’re sheltering for the winter, and it’ll help keep the cold out as well. It’s a win-win!

It’s also worth considering attaching a mouse guard to the hive entrance. Don’t forget to keep an eye on the entrance throughout the season to ensure it doesn’t get completely covered by snow and trap the bees inside the hive.

Many beekeepers still check in on their bees throughout winter to ensure their hives are doing well. This leads to an increase in the population of healthy bees in the coming months, which can make your beekeeping duties and tasks easier come spring.

Keep Mites Out

Pests can endanger your hive, especially in the winter, and Varroa mites are some of the most formidable enemies to bees. These mites feed on broods and come in much larger numbers during the fall. Because of this, keeping mites and parasites far away from your honey bees at all costs is critical.

If Varroa invades the hive at this time of year, they can ruin the population of worker bees, meaning the colony won’t be able to make as much food ahead of winter. To prevent this, consider treating the colony for Varroa mites as part of your winter preparations so your bees are protected throughout the season.

Treating Hives - Avoiding Treatments that Require Evaporation

Some medications and treatments, such as Apilife Varroa, are not recommended for use in winter because it relies on evaporation, which requires temperatures between 15°C and 30°C.

In colder weather, they become less effective, and opening the hive could disturb the bees during clustering, risking their survival. It's better to apply treatments like Apilife Varroa in late summer or early fall. For winter, consider using an Oxalic Acid Vaporizer, which is safe and effective in colder temperatures, especially when the colony is broodless.

Be sure to check our guide on Oxalic Acid Vaporizer Treatment for Bees to learn more.

Remove Excess Space

Extra space in your hive makes it drafty and more difficult to keep warm. Make your hive better fit the colony within it by removing extra supers. You can also use follower boards to make the hive area smaller, especially if you use a top bar hive.

Not only does a smaller hive size keep your honey bees warmer throughout the winter, but it also leaves less room for intruders to enter. Try to create a safe, small space for your bees to spend the next few months that is dry, ventilated, and warm.

While arranging your beehive, make sure the honey frames are positioned so the bee cluster will have easy access to food throughout the season. Proper arrangement of the honey frames is critical for your winter prep, so be sure to do this properly before you tuck your honey bees in for the season.

Maintain Beekeeping & Hive Equipment

Now is the best time to inspect and fix any equipment needing attention. Ensure all your boxes, boards, and covers are in good shape and can keep the worst of the weather out.

Clean anything that needs it, and make any necessary repairs or replacements to your beekeeping equipment and supplies. If there’s any equipment you don’t need during the winter, ensure it’s clean and in good condition before storing it somewhere safe.

Insulate the Hive

Your honey bees will cluster together and warm the colony, but you can help them by preparing the hive for extremely cold temperatures. Wrapping the hive keeps out strong winds, and black roofing felt can absorb warmth on sunny winter days.

Foam insulation boards can also keep drafts out and warmth in, but be careful when covering hives. Ventilation is just as important as insulation. Too much moisture buildup inside the hive leads to deadly condensation or dysentery.

To avoid excess moisture, ensure plenty of air can come in and out through the bottom and top of the hive. This creates cross-ventilation and keeps humidity levels low for the honey bees.

Consider Using a Hot Box

Hot boxes, also known as insulated or "winter" boxes, are specially designed enclosures used to help honey bee colonies survive cold winter conditions. These boxes create a more stable environment by providing additional insulation, which helps regulate the temperature inside the hive.

The goal of a hot box is to reduce heat loss and minimize the energy the bees need to expend in keeping the hive warm.

How to Use Hot Boxes in Winter:

Install Insulation: Wrap or place an insulated box around the hive to trap heat.
Ventilate: Ensure there's airflow to prevent condensation but avoid drafts.
Positioning: Shield the hive from wind and raise it off the ground if needed.
Feed the Bees: Monitor food stores, supplement with sugar if needed.
Check the Hive: Occasionally inspect for moisture and insulation on mild days.

Hot boxes help bees conserve energy and improve winter survival. Check out our 10 frame hot box and moisture board, and help keep your bees safe this season.

Importance of Hive Ventilation

Hive ventilation in winter is crucial for maintaining colony health. While it may seem counterintuitive, proper airflow helps prevent moisture buildup, which can harm bees more than cold temperatures.

Here are the main three reasons why ventilation is important for winter bee health:

Moisture Control: Bees generate moisture through their activity, and without ventilation, condensation forms inside the hive. This cold, dripping water can chill and kill bees.
Preventing Mold and Fungus: Excess humidity promotes mold and fungus growth, which can damage the colony and comb.
Carbon Dioxide Regulation: Proper ventilation ensures fresh air circulates, preventing carbon dioxide buildup and maintaining oxygen levels.

To ensure your bees have the proper ventilation, use a top entrance and an inner cover with ventilation holes to absorb moisture while allowing airflow. Avoid large gaps that may introduce drafts or consider setting up windbreak around your hives to help reduce wind exposure.

Keep a Healthy Queen

A healthy, laying queen is vital to your colony’s survival. While you’re preparing your hive for winter, ensure the queen is strong and has a healthy brooding pattern. If this isn’t the case, you have some options.

You can requeen the colony, but be sure to keep the old queen alive until you’re sure the new one is accepted. You can also consider combining the colony with another one. Putting a weak or queenless colony with a strong one improves its survival chances for the winter, and the smaller colony often accepts the new colony’s queen with ease.

Combining colonies might be a good idea anyway since larger colonies will have a stronger, warmer cluster, more food stored, and a better overall chance of survival. Many beekeepers combine hives (especially smaller ones) to help them have a better chance of surviving the winter.

Just remember to never combine two weak hives. Always put a weak hive with a stronger one to increase the chances of the weak hive getting back on its feet. You should also ensure that the stronger colony has enough food stores to feed the weaker colony all winter as well.

Provide Enough Food

Before winter hits, ensure your hive has enough food to last through the season. The amount of food that bees need depends on the climate and the colony’s overall health, but remember that honey bees eat a lot in winter to stay warm and survive the cold temperatures.

If it looks like there isn’t enough honey to keep the colony alive through the winter, it’s time to set up feeders. Providing a nectar or pollen substitute ensures your bees have the energy to stay warm and keep a thriving colony throughout the season and into the springtime. You can also offer sugar syrup or pollen patties to boost vitamins and minerals for your honey bees.

The Final Buzz on Keeping Honey Bees Warm in the Winter

Honey bees are amazingly hard workers. If your colony is successful, it’ll have a large enough honey supply and a strong population to make it through the upcoming cold season. However, these tips on caring for a beehive in winter can help ensure their survival and keep your busy little friends around for another fruitful year.

Take the necessary steps to prepare your honey bees for winter, and you’ll be able to rest easy knowing that you’ve done everything you can to help them survive. Before you know it, you’ll be back out in the yard checking on them, and spring will have sprung!

For additional information on winter prep, check out our guide on winterizing and insulating your hive.