Wintering of bees in the greenhouse

Cleaning bees in the winter hut. Wintering bees is the most important period in the life of bees. From its outcome depends the state of the apiary and the further ability of the bees to saturated pollination.

If bees make late (in the central regions of the country at the end of October) a purge overfly, then it guarantees them a quieter wintering.

In the central regions of the country in October there are few sunny days, in just a month there are about 75 sunny hours. Often in October, a lot of snow falls. So, in the middle of October there were snowstorms, the snow cover reached 20 cm and more. Snow fell in the first decade of October, and in the middle of the month the temperature reached 10-15 њ C. And yet it is not necessary to hurry with the setting of bees in the winter quarry. Almost always cool weather gives way to warm weather. More often than last flight of bees happens in second half of October. If we hurry to remove the bees for the winter, they will go with a heavy load, they will be stifled in a thaw, which will cause a great loss of them.

In some years in October, bees do not fly over. In this case, you need to take risks by prolonging their presence until the middle of November. Thus, the air temperature from 11 to 15 November was within 8 њ C, and on November 18, 10 њ C. In the above-ground hibernation, in spite of the night cooling, the temperature reached 8 њ C, but the bees were calm, since their last flight was in mid-November. The same warm was the first decade of November was 10.5 њ C and the bees were flying over. This again shows that it is not necessary to hurry to remove bees in the winter quarters.

Bee in the winter quarters and in other rooms are cleaned with the onset of stable cold weather, when there is no hope for flying over the bees, which coincides with the freezing of small bodies of water. Before harvesting the hives into the building,

For the cleaning of bees choose the time when there is no precipitation and the hives are dry. If snow falls, it is swept away from the hives.

In order not to bring dampness into the room with hives, stretchers are put on stands. For carrying beehives, a stretcher is used from two light, strong sticks, between which two straps or ropes are tied, so that they grasp the hive from below and half from the sides.

Fig. 33Trading stretcher with hive

Put the hive on a stretcher and shelves carefully, without kantovki and jerks. From negligent work, part of troubled bees can move away from the club and die of hunger. When kantovke and jerks, the frames may break apart or the honeycomb can be cut off.

First of all, the hives are brought into the winter hut, which will be the last to leave the winter hut, ie, marked with the number “3”. Weaker families, with small fodder reserves (“ZV”), are placed on the upper level. The last ones are beehives marked with the number “1”.

Hives in the winter quarters are usually put without lids, with small gaps between them and flaps in the direction of the passage.

Bee families, for which there was not enough room on the shelves, put in the middle of the passage in several rows and tiers one hive on the other. Each tier is laid with racks for better air exchange. Between the shelves and rows of hives leave a passage so that you can observe the bees. No matter how many bee colonies, they are taken to the winter quarters for one day and as soon as possible.

Care of bees in the winter hut. After the hives are put in the winter hut, the temperature usually rises. To make bees quickly calmed down, the winter quarters are cooled by creating a draft in it: they completely open the doors, hatches and ventilation pipes. As soon as the bees calm down, beehives are opened in the hives.

Bees are better than winter with a closed lower and open upper tapholes. In this case, the hive is better kept warm, and warm air is removed from the nest, not having had time to settle in the form of dew on honeycombs and walls of the hive, i. e. in the hives there is no dampness. If the hive is not equipped with a top hat, then the angle of the canvas is slightly tucked over the front shoulders of the frame and covered with a warming cushion. If the canvas is tucked from the opposite side of the tap hole in the nest, there will be a draft that is undesirable for the bees, especially when the winter hut is intensified.

During the wintering, bees need rest. Visits to the winterman should be reduced to a minimum.

The light bulbs in the hibernate or the glass of the lantern must be painted red, almost without disturbing the bees. In the worst case, you can use a light bulb with a lamp shade that diffuses the light. To enter the winter hut, especially taking beehives with bees, must be cautious, without touching the rest of the hives.

Listening to bees in the hibernate is not necessary. However, when entering the winter hut, it should take 1-2 minutes to listen to their general buzz. A barely audible, even noise speaks about the happy wintering of bees. Sometimes the hum of individual families is heard. At an elevated temperature, noisy families are more noisy, and when they are low, they are weak. In the first case, strong families are removed from the upper insulation, extend the tapholes or intensify the ventilation of the room; in the second case, reduce the flow of cold or the removal of warm air.

Sometimes in the general noise of bees the sounds of individual bees are singled out – this is a sign of absence of the uterus in the family. This hive is exhibited in the greenhouse in the first place and, if the assumption was justified, a weakened family with a uterus is added to a deformed family.

The noise and anxiety of the bees in the hive can result from the penetration of mice into the hive. Their presence is indicated by the presence on the bottom of the beehive of bees with their heads and breasts together and wax litter. Such families are exposed to greenhouses and take measures to remove mice.

Farther to spring, bees appear brood. They spend more honey on his upbringing and worry. When 1 kg of honey is eaten, 1 kg of oxygen is required. In this case, 1.5 kg of carbon dioxide, 0.5 kg of water and heat are released. As a consequence, the temperature rises in the winter hut. It can be within the normal range (2-4 њ C), but it should, if possible, be reduced, as with subsequent warming it will be more difficult to reduce the elevated temperature. To reduce the temperature in the doorways of the winter hut, a grate is installed and the door is opened for the night. At a temperature in the hibernate above 4 њ C, the humidity of the air should be slightly increased, which will soothe the bees.

Relative air humidity in the winter hut is determined using a psychrometer. If there is no psychrometer on the apiary, you can use two reconciled, equally indicative, thermometers. A ball of one of them is wrapped with a batiste or a double layer of gauze, the ends of which are lowered into a vessel with water. From the moistened ball, the moisture evaporates, cooling the balloon more than the drier air in the room. By the difference between the dry and wet thermometer readings, the relative humidity of the room is determined using the table attached to the psychrometers.

At normal humidity of air (75-85%) the need for water of a bee is satisfied due to hygroscopicity of honey. If the air is too wet, which happens with insufficient ventilation of the nest, the honey liquefies and turns sour. The sour honey for bees is no less harmful than the honey one. Dampness in the hive leads to the formation of mold. With high humidity of air, the bees are disturbed by the release of water from the body, and this contributes to overflow of the intestine and the excrement of the bees on the walls of the hive and honeycomb. With dry air honey thickens. To quench thirst, bees eat it more, overflow the intestines, worry, fly out of the hive and die.

To reduce the humidity in the room raise the temperature while increasing the ventilation. If this does not help, then the room is made of quicklime, table salt and other substances that absorb moisture. If this does not help, then it is better to transfer the bees to another place or to put them to freedom.

In the central regions of the country, bees seldom suffer from dry air in the winter hut, while in Siberia and the Far East winter bees have to water the floor to raise the humidity, or to hang wet bags, to bring containers with water.

Winter feeding of bees is permissible only as a last resort, if there is a fear that bees will die of hunger. The average family eats about 5 kg of honey from the time of assembly of the nest and before putting it into the winter quarters and consumes it as much in the winterhouse before the exhibition of bees at will.

Abnormal wintering conditions for bees cause the disintegration of the winter club, early egg laying by the uterus, resulting in bees consuming more honey and worse wintering.

Hibernation of bees in the above-ground premises, on will and in greenhouses. Due to fluctuations in temperature, bees hibernate worse in overground areas. It must be borne in mind that the light penetrating through the windows and shutters beckons bees out of the hives. The bee that flew out of the hive will not return back to it and perishes on the floor. Therefore, care should be taken to ensure that light does not enter the room. To cool the overground winter hut, doors and windows are opened at night, and in the morning they are closed again.

There has been a long dispute over the benefits of wintering bees at will. It is clear that if the winter hut for bees is bad, it is better to leave the bees at will. In the central regions of the country, only strong and middle families can hibernate. For the winter they can be left in their places or collected in groups. In both cases it is desirable to wrap the hives with roofing felt or pergamon, carving holes in the tap hole and against the ventilation grids in the hive cover. In wintering bees, the cooled air is not capable of retaining an increased amount of moisture.

With insufficient ventilation, moisture settles on the cooled surface of the walls of the hive and frames in the form of small droplets. The hive will not have dampness, if warm, steam-saturated air will be freely removed from the hive. To do this, open the upper and lower tapholes. As soon as the snow falls, they are sprinkled with hives. Due to the porosity, the snow keeps the heat of the hive well. After thaw and subsequent cooling, the surface of the snow forms an ice crust. It is believed that the crust inhibits the penetration of air to the hive and recommends that it be destroyed. It is hardly necessary to do this. Hibernating bears and badgers do not choke under the snow and safely endure the winter.

In the Moscow and neighboring areas of the bee at winter hibernate worse than in wintering. This is explained by the fact that the snow falls late, often melts, resulting in the bees are exposed to low temperatures and wind.

For many years we have left a significant part of the strong and weak bee colonies to winter in greenhouses at various plus temperatures. This was due to the need to supply medical institutions with bees. In recent years, because of the overwintering of the winterman by bees, a part (about 20-25 families) of the weakest and insufficiently provided beekeeping families from November to January incubus hibernate in the greenhouse. They are placed in the southwestern part of the greenhouse, approximately on an area of ​​100 m2, where the temperature is maintained within 6-12 њ C. Bees periodically fly over, the results of wintering bees are good.