Wintering
Lexikon
Wintering preparation is everything that prepares a colony for the cold season after the last honey harvest.
Wintering preparation is everything that prepares a colony for the cold season after the last honey harvest. Three things belong inseparably together: the treatment against the Varroa mite, feeding up sufficient winter stores, and setting up a calm winter home. The Bavarian State Institute for Viticulture and Horticulture counts the wintering phase as lasting until about the end of October.
The Varroa treatment is not optional. Under Section 15 of the Bee Disease Ordinance, the owner must treat all colonies of an apiary against varroosis every year, unless the competent authority orders otherwise. Besides formic acid, there are several approved veterinary medicines. Which one is suitable and how it is to be used is stated in its authorization. Pharmacy-only products may be used only in the quantity, dosage, and duration of use stated on the product labeling, and prescription-only products only on a veterinary prescription. Specific quantities therefore belong in the package leaflet, not in a lexicon.
As for feed: suitable are sugar syrups, fondant, home-mixed sugar water, or your own blossom honey in the combs. Unsuitable are dark honeys, forest and melezitose honeys, because their high mineral content burdens the rectum, and above all honey from other sources, which can bring in American foulbrood. Liquid feed is more attractive to the bees than fondant, but it also increases the danger of robbing and the risk that the brood nest becomes cramped.
Protection from mice is part of the winter home. In the winter cluster the bees can hardly defend themselves, so the height of the entrance is reduced to about six millimeters, using a mouse guard or a correspondingly low entrance reducer. Seven millimeters is sometimes mentioned, but the bee institutes give six. Peace and quiet also matter: disturbances, for example from branches knocking against the hive or storms, increase food consumption and burden the rectum, which favors dysentery. An open mesh floor, an absorbent cloth instead of foil, and a hive volume matched to the strength of the colony help against dampness and mold in the hive.