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I've been keeping this blog for all of my beekeeping years and I am beginning my 19th year of beekeeping in April 2024. Now there are more than 1300 posts on this blog. Please use the search bar below to search the blog for other posts on a subject in which you are interested. You can also click on the "label" at the end of a post and all posts with that label will show up. At the very bottom of this page is a list of all the labels I've used.

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I began this blog to chronicle my beekeeping experiences. I have read lots of beekeeping books, but nothing takes the place of either hands-on experience with an experienced beekeeper or good pictures of the process. I want people to have a clearer picture of what to expect in their beekeeping so I post pictures and write about my beekeeping saga here.Master Beekeeper Enjoy with me as I learn and grow as a beekeeper.

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Wednesday, January 07, 2015

Blanketing the Bees

"Baby, it's cold outside...."
Seems weird to see a hive in a blanket.  After all, we are in Georgia.  But tonight the temperature is going to drop so low that with the wind, it is supposed to feel like 0 degrees.  BRRRR.  

I keep thinking of the child's finger game:

Here is the beehive.
Where are the bees?
Hiding away where nobody sees....
Watch and you'll see them come out of the hive.
One, Two, Three, Four, Five.

What I want when late February or early March comes around is for the bees to come out of the hive, one, two, three, four, five. 

It might be purely psychological impact on me, the beekeeper, but it felt pretty good to tuck the bees in on this cold night.  I went out after putting these blankets on and added a sheet fully covering each hive for another layer!

Earlier this winter, I followed the video advice of Mountain Sweet Honey and taped the box joinings so as to cut down on drafts inside the hive box.  Here's their video about preparing the hives for winter.


This is a medium 8 frame hive going into winter with four boxes of honey and bees.  I'm using four boxes because that is 32 frames, comparable to three medium boxes for a 10 frame hive.  The inner cover has an empty box above it where I have a feeder into which I put honey in the late fall.


3 comments:

  1. Dear Linda,
    your post made me smile. I am a beekeeper in the south of Germany where we regularly have a lot of snow in winter. Our coldest night this winter has been - 33.5 degrees Celsius. We don't cover the bees, and we don't seal the cracks. The bees survive.
    I love reading your blog posts!
    Sabine from Germany

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  2. I like read your blog posts!

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  3. Sabine, I laughed at myself as I did this. I have never blanketed the bees in ten years of beekeeping. Last year we were in snow with temps in the teens and I didn't cover the bees. The whole time I was doing it, I kept thinking of places like Germany and Nebraska where my friend Michael Bush lives. He has 900 hives covered in snow for a lot of the winter and there's no way he covers up the hives. I think mine will survive if they are strong against varroa and have enough food and that's really all there is to it....

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