Getting Ready for Winter

Claire Waring discusses how we can help our bees prepare and give them the best chance of survival

- By Claire Waring

Rather than talk about raising queens (it's a bit too late in the year), let's look at getting ready for the winter ahead.

In one way, a honey bee colony can be regarded as perpetual. Discounting calamities such as disease, the colony is designed to live from one year to the next. It may reproduce by swarming, but assuming the remaining virgin queen gets mated and returns to the nest, the colony as such will continue. Bumblebees and wasps continue from one year to the next through the survival of an individual, mated queen rather than a colony; the offspring of solitary bees often overwinter as pupae, emerging in spring to start the cycle again.

COLONY PREPARATIONS

Let's look at how the bees themselves get ready for winter.

As spring proceeds into summer, the colony expands, resulting in more bees being available for foraging, which increases the amount of nectar and pollen being brought back to the hive. The nectar is converted to honey and stored.

The brood nest size will peak and then start to contract as the queen reduces her egg-laying rate later in the season. The workers then start filling the empty brood cells with honey, primarily above the brood nest. Some pollen will be stored around the brood but the workers eat a lot of what has been collected to help develop their fat bodies. These are 'winter bees', designed to live for about six months, through the winter. In spring, they use the protein and fat stored in the fat bodies to produce brood food for the new larvae as the queen starts laying more eggs.

DRONES