Finding a new (old) Way to Winter Over our Bees in 2025
Denise and I are currently an hour outside of Jasper, on the Ice Fields Parkway in the Canadian Rockies. It’s 4:30 AM and the outside temperature is -31°f. We’re in the Mellifera van where, thanks to the Webasto diesel heater, it’s a steady 72°. I’m sure our cats are underneath the bed covers back in WNC and have become one with our house sitter. They’ll remain there until she turns up the thermostat and heats the house to an acceptable level; an impossible feat for those overbred fur-balls. Several weeks ago, it was 3° in our bee yards (!). The bees, however, don't have modern means to heat their homes. They’ve perfected a method which evolved during their beginnings in the Cretaceous Period.
Colder winters are becoming more frequent in WNC. The South, along with the rest of the country was in a deep freeze in January. Many local beekeepers did not prepare their bees for this new normal. Growing up and keeping bees in the Midwest, I learned that insulating hives is mandatory for cold weather. Besides wrapping the hives this year, I’m trying a different method to keep the girls alive, happy and warm. I’m utilizing the Condensing Hives concept.
The Condensing Hives idea is nothing new. It involves heat transfer and physics to keep heat, moisture and stagnant air right where the bees need it. Clustered bees in the hive create heat by vibrating their wing muscles, in essence, they’re shivering. Shivering is an organisms involuntary response in cold temperatures to keep it warm. The hive, a super-organism shivering as one, creates heat, exhales CO2 and moisture, very much like a human exercising in the snow.
Conventional wisdom and what I have done for decades was to vent the top of the hive, thus keeping moisture from raining down and chilling the cluster. This also vented the CO2 out. But is this the chosen method of wild bees in nature? Some famous entomologists such as Prof. Emeritus Thomas Seeley and Dr. David Peck don’t think so. Trees have a natural high R insulation. I had that covered with my hive wraps. But there is no upper ventilation in a natural tree hive colony. In fact, bees in nature prefer only one entrance located at the bottom of their enclosure. In a tree, wintering bees move up into the fully contained heat dome. The moisture they produce rolls down the inner sides of the hollowed out tree. They collect this moisture to assist in the digestion of thick honey they stored during the warmer months. But what about the collection of CO2? It has been discovered that CO2 in the hive actually helps slow down the bees activity without killing them. This Winter Condensing Hives methodology is part of what is called, Nature-Based Beekeeping.
This year not only did we wrap the hives, but I placed green boards with an insulation of R5 between the solid inner cover and outer telescoping cover of each hive. This prevented both water, heat and CO2 from escaping the hives. Thus far, we have only lost four out of fifty hives. Using a stethoscope to listen in on the hives and an IR scope for heat signatures, it appears most of the surviving hives are warm, strong and happy. I couldn’t ask for anything better for our bees. It's a new normal for our apiaries.
Photo of a very cold dawn in the bee yard.
