today we're in the beer I'm going to show you how I winterize the heights
winterizing hives are very very geographical a lot of places all you
have to do is wrap them with tar paper or something like that and insulate the
cover cover in the bottom screen you're all good here I had some real problems
with winter die-off on one really cold year so I started to ask some of the
beekeepers around here and I found one guy that winterized them this way and I
found it very interesting and I tried it last year and it worked great so I
really think I'm going to end up doing it this way all the time and what he
does is he built boxes around them puts wood shavings insulate system and it
works great last year I only had 20% loss which is normal and this year we're
off to see what we get so now I'm going to show you how I winterize these four
hives it's cool enough now that there's not going to be too too much activity
that's about five degrees around here that's fine for this time here it is
they're not gonna be too too active right now so it's actually kind of a
good time to get them settled in their box and
so first thing I do is I remove the lids
remove the reducers out of all four hives
then we're gonna get then we're gonna get four bridges this is to sit in the
front of the high so that these have a way to get out of the holes and keep the
shavings from coming up the holes and plugging it up so what we're gonna do
get rid of some of the propolis right there now they come out here and here so
this one this one nice to use plastic on tops it's a little bit different I'm
going to
set it down with that rule they're not
and then put these
some of these I need chimps which I made sure I cut some whenever you make the
equipment you really need to make it exactly the same for this reason
so you're not fiddling around but stuff to make stuff fit so you push these in
just a hair in just the hair
so you can slip the box over
okay I got these little spacers to block the rest of the entrances so I'm going
to put them like that I'll go around do the other ones these other bees are uh
okay you see that the bees got a little out of hand here so we're just gonna
leave them be we'll all keep doing the other ones and and let them get mainly
back in the hive it's kind of nice to have them in put it down and when they
come out the kamut the entrance so you don't get some stuck in the shaving make
sure this is up here
we're now gonna put the box on top
do it
the most aggressive high can start moving first when you're pushing up
against the front of the board
so you line it up with coal this one you shove it up against the board hand
in there make sure the box is seated down on the pallet push all the hides
and the entrances up make sure that they're lined up good
make sure that they are lined up real good and then I get screws and I screw
this to power
Hey
so now you get them now you get a bundle of shavings and you loosely and you
loosely get it around the outsides don't pack it down cause it'll lose a lot of
its insulating if you pack it down
so you keep just filling in the gaps without packing it down
so you keep packing she keep moving it until you feel like it's actually all
gone down in between now the middle hasn't been done yet because you want
the little air gaps in the shavings that's what actually gives a lot of its
give it a lot of its insulation value
then you can see that it still goes down
you can see that still still goes down there a bit
you keep going the lid is just a flat piece of 3/8 plywood with a brace in the
center so the brace will fit onto the edge and the corners will fit over the
one inch above these sides so when this is up one inch deploy with an inch down
over the palate so this will hold the line' at the right height and they can
be a little tight to get on which is kind of good this one's not so much
which is kind of good because you don't want it you don't want it loose so there
you go you don't have to be a fancy carpenter
or whatever and looking at this you can tell I'm not so it's very simple to make
it is a little more expensive than I wanted it to be but it's way cheaper
than buying those insulated ones ah the ones that hold the four pallets
they're like three hundred dollars per one I'm guessing it could be through 40
bucks that's me collecting scrap wood and everything too so once he making me
happen for a few years I don't know what I'm gonna put on top of them because the
other years I just put tarp and it seemed to work so I'm probably gonna do
that again it would be nice to have something that's a little more permanent
so it would work up just a little bit better but this has worked last year
really well so there you go this how I live my knees