# Question about freezing bees



## naturelover (Jun 6, 2006)

A question for any beekeepers who are experiencing the extremely cold weather. It's so cold in some places right now, what can you do to protect your bees during such a cold snap? Do you bring your bee hives into a warmer sheltered area?
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## Ernie (Jul 22, 2007)

I put up a tarp on one side to block the wind. It's pretty cold out on the hill where my beeyard is, and I lose a lot of sleep everytime we get another one of those -25 nights. However on the rare times when it does warm up to around 50 and sunny, I'll go out and see bees coming in and out of the hive and bringing out their dead. So I guess they're doing ok. I don't really have a warmer area to bring them into, and I probably wouldn't if I did. Moving hives is a serious pain, and in the winter I'm not sure how good it would be for the bees. 

From my reading, they create a little ball of bees and the internal temperature of that ball is pretty hot. Warm enough to keep a cadre of bees and their queen alive, I guess. We're past the winter solstice now and the days are getting longer again. Hopefully we'll see some more warmer days and I can get out and check my hive.


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## the kid (Jul 9, 2006)

depends what you call cold ,,,, was -14 air temp -37 wind chill at 6am ..
last week both were a little colder ,, norm is warmer ,,, but it gets colder north of here ,,, all Im doing this year is keeping them out of the wind ,,, cleaning the porch and keeping the dead from blocking the entrence,,, have some candy on for backup feed and have the top vented some to let moisture out ,,, dont want to bee making beescycels ,, made them last year, this hobby cost enough with out doing that... 
the kid


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## Dirtslinger (Feb 10, 2007)

Depending on where you are it may already be too late. My exposed hives are all dead, the sheltered hives are fine.
Styrofoam and tarpaper is what worked in the past.
Good luck! BTW check them asap- looks like it's tough to find bees this year, already.


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## OkieDavid (Jan 15, 2007)

You'll hear many beekeeps comment that "all beekeeping is local" and that's for certain. Your local climate determines what protective measures you need to take. Ernie has it right, in response to cold weather the colony "clusters" around each other. By vibrating their wings rapidly they generate body heat which warms this cluster. The very center of the cluster where the queen is will maintain a temperature at or slightly above 95 degrees F. Within an inch or two from the outside edge of the cluster, the temp will be the same as the ambient temp. As the bees on the outside get cold, they crawl to the center and those at the center take their turn on the outside....Pretty neat system provided you get a break in the weather every couple of days to allow the cluster to move to an area of honey as if they can't eat, they can't live.
Northern folks like Dirtslinger often wrap their hives with tarpaper/insulation because of the extremes in both temp and wind speed. In my mild climate, that would be the death of a hive because here moisture/condensation would decimate the hive. I keep mine on OPEN screened bottom boards to allow plenty of air exchange/circulation to keep it dry. Keep in mind, I'm talking about an air exchange, not a draft.....Drafty hives with wind barreling through the hive would kill one fast. The most I've ever done was position them where they are South facing and protected from straight line winds by shrubs.
So I guess the short answer (after having given the long answer) is it really depends on "where" you are as to what precautions/preparations you make to help the bugs through the winter.


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## sugarbush (Jul 15, 2007)

If the cluster is big enough bees can handle cold. They can even appear dead for 3-5 days and then once the temp rise again they start moving again. 

What kills bees most often during winter is starvation, second most common killer is moisture.

When it is real cold bees cannot break cluster and go to honey stores to feed and they starve very quickly.


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## naturelover (Jun 6, 2006)

Thanks all for the information. I'm not a beekeeper myself (yet) but have been following the news for the past year about CCD. The recent cold weather in northern Canada got me wondering what beekeepers would do about replacing their bees if they all got frozen.

When I was a kid I lived in northern B.C. and we used to get more snow and more intense (-40's F) frigid temperatures up there then than they usually do now. We had Dutch neighbours with a prosperous cut-flower farm and they had bee hives that were kept in fireweed patches. In the winters when it started snowing hard they would roll up big snowballs and stack them into thick 5 foot high semi-circular walls to act as wind breaks and snow drift breaks in the vicinity of their bee hives. Some folks thought they were nuts for building snow forts for their bees but I guess it helped because they had a booming honey business and never seemed to be lacking for bees after each winter.
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