Keeping Warm: Life Inside the Hive in Winter

Our seasonal report from local apiculturist, Manek Dubash.

It’s three months on from the last blog in autumn, when I talked about the end of the honey

harvest and what the bees were facing in the days and months ahead.

Now those days I mentioned are here. It’s freezing outside but, inside the hive, the bees

are—hopefully—still alive and huddled together to conserve heat. With luck, they’ll

protecting heir queen in the middle of the cluster at a temperature of around 20 degrees.

When I say hopefully, the best thing any beekeeper can do for his or her charges at this time of

year is almost nothing. You certainly don’t want to open up a hive and lose all the precious

heat they’ve expended so much energy creating. All that can be done is to enure they have

access to a source of energy, namely fondant, that they can access directly without having to

break the cluster. This is near-pure carbohydrate which prevents starvation, a horrible sight

to see at the end of winter when it comes time to check on the colonies.

Of course, I left each colony a super, or about 20Kg of honey, that they can make use of. That

should in normal circumstances be enough, but each year is different so we never know for

sure.

That said, every beekeeper loses colonies, most likely over winter. Over the years, most of my

losses have been in early spring, towards the end of the lifespans of the winter bees: workers

born in autumn whose special internal fat bodies will have allowed them to survive for up to

six months. That’s much longer than their sisters who were and will be born at other times of

year and so destined to be foragers; their lifespans are around six weeks.

Fingers crossed!

Manek Dubash

The Beekeeper at the Grain Store