Wintering
Lexikon
Wintering is the term for everything that prepares a colony for the cold season after the last honey harvest.
Wintering is the term for everything that prepares a colony for the cold season after the last honey harvest. Three things belong inseparably together: treatment against the varroa mite, feeding up a sufficient winter store, and preparing a quiet wintering site. The Landesanstalt für Weinbau und Gartenbau reckons the wintering phase runs until roughly the end of October.
Varroa treatment is not optional. Under Paragraph 15 of the Bee Disease Ordinance (Germany), the owner must treat all colonies of an apiary against varroosis every year, unless the responsible authority orders otherwise. Presenting formic acid as the only option falls short: several approved veterinary medicinal products exist. Which one is suitable and how it is to be applied is set out in its approval. Pharmacy-only products may only be used in the amount, dosage, and duration of application specified on the product's labeling, and prescription-only products only on veterinary prescription. Specific dosage figures therefore belong on the package insert, not in an encyclopedia.
For feed, the rule is: sugar syrups, feeding paste, home-mixed sugar water, or the colony's own blossom honey still in the comb are suitable. Dark honeys, forest and melezitose honeys are unsuitable, because their high mineral content burdens the rectum, and above all foreign honeys are unsuitable because they can introduce American foulbrood. Liquid feed is more attractive to the bees than feeding paste, but this also increases the risk of robbing and the risk that the brood nest gets crowded out.
Protection against mice is part of preparing the wintering site. In the winter cluster the bees can barely defend themselves, so the hive entrance is narrowed in height to about six millimeters, using a mouse guard or a correspondingly low entrance reducer. Occasionally seven millimeters is mentioned, but the specialist agencies name six. Quiet also matters: disturbances, for example from branches knocking against the hive or storms, increase feed consumption and burden the rectum, which favors dysentery. Against dampness and mold inside the hive, an open screened bottom board, an absorbent fabric instead of foil, and a hive volume matched to the colony's strength all help.