Final Winter Preps for the Colonies staying here - at our Farm in Eastern Washington

This weekend, I put my hives to 'bed' up here on our farm in Eastern Washington.  The weather is about to turn pretty cold so I want to do my final preps to give them the best shot of surviving our long winters here.  

The first step is to provide a 'sugar box' for emergency feed.  Bees like to move up in the supers and this seems to work well.  This is just simple dry table sugar you can get from a store.  I use one sheet of newspaper that they can chew through it.  The sugar will crust over a bit from the hive moisture and new 'dry' sugar is exposed as they eat their way through it.

The 'sugar box' is a simple box with 3 or 4 inch walls with a 1/2 inch screen mesh. 

Sugar box placed on brood chambers

Once the sugar box is placed on the hive, I use another box that is filled with burlap.  This acts in two ways:   It insulated and removes moisture.  The key to winter survival is for the hive to be dry and well feed.  Moisture is the real problem here.

Simple box with stand offs

Burlap scraps

 This insulator box is a simple thing - just a an old box with some stand offs to support the burlap.  This burlap can be removed later in the winter - if it gets too moist.  The point here is to trap the moisture here - and away from the bees.

Here's the setup for a different perspective:

All Set for the Winter!

Colonies successfully delivered to California!

Some of my hives were setup in an almond orchard in Central California for the winter.  This is quite amazing in that it was almond 80 degrees F every day while I worked there.  The bees 'woke up' from being pretty cold here in Eastern Washington.  They were hungry so I provided them with extra syrup and pollen patties.

Beautiful Almond Orchard

Placed Hives with Nuc Boxes

The "Nuc Boxes" in the foreground are for next years new colony starts.  We should do great here with lots of drones and sunny weather in April!

Pollen patties - they loved these!

When the bees 'woke up' they were extremely active and hungry.  I fed lots of syrup and pollen patties to each hive.  They seemed to enjoy this!

An old memory...

This picture brought back some great memories of my youth.  I spent quite a bit of time on the

Toluomne  River hunting and fishing.  It is so exciting to come back to this area - doing something different with my bees.  This Spring is going to be great!

It turns out that there are many beekeepers who overwinter their bees here. This yard had hundreds of hives near a place called "Dry Creek" just about 20 miles away.

Other bee yards