Hello and welcome back to The "Brrrr" Vlog
It's freezing today
It's about 38 degrees Fahrenheit
For those of you outside the United States that's about 3 degrees Celsius
So what do the bees do to cope with weather like this?
Well they ball up into a cluster inside the hive
and they share their heat
The bees in the center of the cluster get closer together
Unfortunately there's comb that's in the way
so what they do is they go inside the comb
They actually go head-first into the cells
to fill that gap in
and they tighten that cluster up really tight into a nice little ball
and the bees in the center vibrate to generate heat
and that heats up the whole cluster
The bees on the outside will be a little bit colder, but they provide an insulating bearier
I'm going to be making some modifications to this 5-frame nuc today
to make it a little bit easier for them to cope with the temperatures
In a feral colony where the hive might be living inside the cavity of a tree
the tree provides some advantages that our man-made boxes just don't have
So let's jump on over and take a look at a bee tree
and see if we can identify some of those differences
Now here's my favorite bee tree
Unfortunately from the outside all we can see is just this crack that's an opening
I can stick the camera in there and see some bees, that's really cool
But we can't really see what the cavity inside looks like
If we were to take a cross section of the tree and take a look at the cavity
We wouldn't see something that looks like our hives, the tiny square boxes
We would see an irregular shape
with thick walls for better insulation
but most importantly, the ceiling would not be flat like our hives
It would probably be domed or maybe even a "V" shape or a wedge
This is very important when we're considering condensation inside the hive
With a "V" shape or a domed surface
we don't have anywhere for the condensation to gather and rain down on the bees
It would just flow down the walls
There's another advantage that these trees have over our little boxes
and that's the inside surface of the cavity is very rough
and the bees want to apply propolis to that
What propolis is is, it's a tree resin or plant resins that the bees harvest and they bring in
They don't eat it, but they apply it to all the surfaces
and it provides an anti-fungal or anti-microbial bearier
and that helps to improve the health of the bees
If we could do something like that to our own hives maybe that would be very helpful to the bees
So let's head back to our hives
So le't take a look at some of the things I've done to this box to try to mimic
or at least make up for the fact that we just don't have these advantages that a tree has
First of all, the way I have this stacked is:
Up at the top here is a box of just honey
Down in the 2nd box was their brood chamber
and it had a little bit of honey as well
But most of this at this time of year will be empty comb, something for them to cluster in
And down at the bottom it's completely empty
There are frames down there but they didn't draw out any comb in them
This spacer goes around 3 sides
The front side here is open
Which gives them a way to ventilate the moisture
And gives them an upper entrance which is an advantage to the bees
In the cold winters sometimes it's easier for them to exit out the top
instead of the bottom to take their cleansing flights
Here in Portland Oregon insulating the hives is not as important as controlling moisture
We have very wet winters
And although it's sunny and dry right now it's really cold
And tomorrow we're expected to get a storm that's going to bring either snow or freezing rain
Let's cross our fingers for snow. Freezing rain is not a good thing.
It causes limbs to break off of trees and can cause a lot of damage
But for the hive what I need to do is to help control moisture
Specifically I want to reduce condensation on the inner side of the lid
This lid is only 3/4 of an inch thick and doesn't insulate really well
So that's a very cold surface for the bees
So when they resperate and they breath, just like we do, they breath out moisture
that moisture will condense on the inside of the lid
and then rain on to them
and wet bees are very dead bees
They can survive the cold temperature but not if they're wet
So I'm going to be putting on about an inch and a half of styrofoam
I made these boards out of some scrap styrofoam I've had sitting in my garage for a few years
You've probably seen it sitting in the background of some of my videos
I just took it and cut it to size
stacked 2 of them together
and then taped them so that they stay together
I'll just be stacking it on top of the lid
and the idea is that it will help to keep that inner surface of the lid a little bit warmer
to prevent water from condensing
Instead it should just vent out that upper vent
By using a brick and a strap
I can hold that styrofoam piece down so it doesn't blow away
So this is my first winter using 5-frame nucs
We'll see if some of these modifications help and if this works and if they survive the winter
Thanks for watching!