Preparing Our Hives for Winter
October is a quieter month in the apiary.
The long summer days are behind us, the colonies are shrinking, and our work turns from keeping up with the season to making sure every hive is ready for the colder months ahead. It is one of our favourite times of year, and a good moment to share what actually happens on the South Yorkshire/Derbyshire border as our bees settle in for winter.
The last forage of the year: Ivy
Before the cold properly arrives, there is one final flourish in the beekeeping calendar: the ivy flow.
Ivy flowers late in the season, often into October, and on a mild day our hives can still be busy working it. Ivy honey sets very hard and is largely used by the bees themselves as winter stores, so it is not a honey you will typically see in a jar. But it matters enormously.
A colony that has drawn on the ivy flow generally heads into winter with the reserves it needs.
How the colony changes
Through autumn, the queen lays fewer and fewer eggs. The summer bees, which spent their lives foraging, are gradually replaced by a generation of longer living winter bees.
These bees are physiologically different, their job is not to forage but to survive, keeping the queen warm through the coldest months.
Once the temperatures drop, the bees form a cluster inside the hive and shiver their flight muscles to generate heat, around 36'C, taking turns so that no bee is left on the cold outer edge for long.
What we do to get the hives through
Our winter preparation is mostly about prevention.
Our hives are of the best design and quality, giving the colonies full weather protection and ventilation. This ensures the bees stay dry and well aired whatever the winter brings. (One less thing to worry about!)
We reduce the entrances to keep out robbing wasps and bees from other colonies, and we fit mouse guards now that the mice are looking for somewhere warm for winter.
Beyond that, the best thing we can do is leave them alone. Once the weather turns, opening a hive can chill the cluster, so inspections stop and the bees are trusted to do what they have to do.
Why this matters for the honey you buy
Everything we do in autumn runs on the same principle as through the rest of the year - healthy bees first, honey second.
Because every hive is ours, we are the ones doing this work, and we are the ones who see each colony through to spring. When you buy from Haskins Honey, you are buying from real beekeepers who know exactly where their honey came from and what those colonies have been through.
In winter the colonies keeps working in their own quiet way, holding the cluster warm through the coldest days.
It is also when there is something rather lovely about enjoying our honey stirred into something warming, while the hives work gently under the winter sky.