If you live anywhere that gets moderately cold during the winter months, here are some suggestions on how to prepare your hives for the cold months.
Once honey harvesting is done, now is the time to make sure the hives build up their honey stores for winter. How you choose to overwinter your hives is up to you. Single deep? Double deep? Single deep + super? Heck, you could even do a double deep plus a super if and only if the hive is strong enough. But if you’re doing single deeps only, they better be full of honey before winter sets in.
One way to help the bees build up is to feed them sugar syrup. 2:1 ratio is recommended at this point as they’ll still need to dry it a bit for storage. Feed…feed…feed… as much as they’ll take. They need to get weight on that hive before temps drop to the 40s or lower. After that, sugar syrup will be too cold for them to take.
As an added insurance policy, you could opt to put a candy board on your hive. This will give the bees a little extra food come late winter when their honey stores might be running a bit low. Yes, they’ll need to be able to mix it with moisture to turn it back into a nectar-substitute, but it might just be enough for them to keep going until spring comes and the temps rise back into the 50s.
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