We just completed our first major spring project of 2021. We had high hopes for the bees last year. We had four strong hives, a good start to the summer, treated early for mites. We decided not to harvest any honey and leave it to overwinter the bees. Our goal was to overwinter all of them. But then the wildfires changed things.

We aren’t sure how much the fires really impacted things, but the smoke and cloud cover slowed down hive activity and things got cooler much faster than we would have liked. Our strongest hive absconded, they just left. We know they had plenty of stores and quite a bit of room so it was perplexing. It could be they didn’t have sufficient mite treatment – but we aren’t certain.

Partway through the winter we lost a second hive and took measures to insulate the hives better, supplement their honey stores with fondant and generally cross our fingers and hope the other two would do ok.

Getting frustrated in any project where there is a steep learning curve is part of growth, but beekeeping isn’t an inexpensive endeavor in both time and money. We started talking about what else we could do or if we should just throw in the towel and give up. After much thought, we decided to keep going.

Top three things bees need to overwinter.
1) plenty of food
2) strong enough colony to maintain hive warmth
3) moisture control.

These are all things we can provide to a certain degree. It’s easy enough to feed overwinter if they don’t have enough honey stores. We can put insulation on the hive boxes to bring up the temperature. We can provide drainage and absorptive material to reduce moisture.

We did, however, decide that our apiary location wasn’t ideal to keep the colonies going naturally. While it’s out of the way of anyone and hidden back among the trees. the location was pretty open to the weather and doesn’t get a ton of sunlight. After some debating, we elected to move them to the middle of the property where their is more open exposure to the sun.

The location we picked is mostly out of the way with good southern exposure. They will get quite a bit of early morning light through to late afternoon and shade in the evening when it’s the hottest for us. This should encourage them to be more productive and keep the hives warmer during cooler days.

To help with the weather – we decided to build a cover over the apiary. It’s not big, only 12 x 8 which will cover the number of hives we want, ideally 4 – 6 at most.

We started by removing a chunk of barbwire fencing covered with brush (poison oak with a trip to urgent care in between things) and leveled the area with gravel. The gravel is there mostly to level it and provide footing, we didn’t put in weed cloth so in a year or so grass will grow in and that’s fine.

We built the structure with the roof sloped to block our winter weather that moves in from the northwest. While strong downpours and wind will still get things wet, the daily drizzle will be kept off the hives while still giving us room to work underneath. It’s constructed of 4x4s, hand-made trusses, and purlins, and a tinted polycarbonate patio cover.

Moving the hives was both the easiest and hardest part of the process. I say hardest because we didn’t do it the “correct” way proscribed by most bee experts. Ideally, we should have either 1) moved them 2 feet per day, or 2) moved them several miles away for a couple of weeks then moved them back. Neither option was ideal for our situation.

We read a few articles about moving them at night, leaving them closed in for 72 hours, and then putting an obstruction in front of the hive when opened. In theory, the enclosed time plus the new obstacle forces the bees to reorient when they leave the hive preventing them from getting lost.

We weren’t thrilled with the idea of losing bees due to disorientation – but we didn’t have many other options immediately available. the 2 foot per day method would take us about five months. We ratcheted the hives together and I closed the mouse guards with screws to prevent escapes (we had a few).

That evening we loaded them up on a cart and slowly worked our way through the old tree farm to their new home. The process was quick and painless and we had them settled in about 30 minutes.

We weren’t too worried about ventilation over the next 72 hours, it’s been cool at night and the days weren’t predicted to get very warm. I checked on them every day and all seemed well. They were pretty active kicking out dirt and chunks of pollen under the mouse guards and a few managed to find a couple of holes to sneak out.

The night before the 72-hour mark, I opened them up and we placed some tomato cages with fir branches in front. A few bees came out to see what was up but it was too cold and dark for anyone to fly off. The next couple of days were cool and wet and we hoped that would also help force reorientation. I think our timing was good for this project.

It’s been about a week and we still have the obstructions in front. We are seeing fewer bees get lost (we had quite a few the first two days back in the old location. But we can see them leave, orient, and others come home packing in the pollen.

We aren’t sure how long to leave the obstructions, the article we read wasn’t really clear on that part – so we decided to just slowly back them away from the hives over a few days. The plan will be to get two more packages in April for a total of four hives again. That will fill in our area and we still have room for one or two more should we get lucky enough for a swarm this spring.