Wintering of bees in a paddock. Beekeeping for Beginners

Strong bee colonies with sufficient volume of honey for food can outdoors winter frosts to -40 degrees. But in a colder terrain with a long (up to 5-7 months) winter period, the best alternative will be the wintering of bees in the oshanika.

Why the bee does not fall asleep

The family is preparing for the winter the entire active spring-summer season, with the exception of the breeding season. The bees are stocked with honey, a large generation of workers are grown. They do not fall into winter hibernation, like other insects, because they are not adapted to the accumulation of nutrients in their bodies. Separately, individuals can not stand the cold. Bees before wintering are pieced into the club in the form of an ellipsoid. Inside it, they sit more freely and can move around. Due to movement in the center of the club, heat is generated up to 25-30 degrees Celsius. In the outer layer, the bees, pressing against each other, form a dense shell with a thickness of 3 to 7 cm with a temperature of about +15 degrees. Gradually they change places - from the center they get into the shell and vice versa. Being in a relatively active movement and eating honey from the sealed frames, gathered in a club for warmth, they save their lives. The wintering of bees in the oshanika facilitates this difficult period for them.

Features of winter behavior

Feeding stocks of the bee are placed at the top of the hive, closer to the back wall of the nest. Below against the tap, they grow brood. Here they are formed in the club, which is formed at a plus temperature: in weak families - at +13 degrees, in strong families - at +8. The upper half of the club is always placed on a large area of the sealed frames.

The bees warm the honeycombs with their warmth, the wax on their lids melts, and some of the cells are printed. They penetrate water vapor from the air and dilute honey, which feed the bees. The club gradually moves on the honeycombs upwards, heading towards the back wall of the hive. If within the framework of enough honey, the bees quietly move through the inter-frame spaces.

At the beginning of wintering, the desired temperature in the club is maintained by the heat from the bees in the process of their vital activity. When it gets colder, the club shrinks. Bees occupy inter-frame spaces and free cellular cells. To keep the heat in the club they start eating more food.

At its full eating the bees are forced to move to the next frame. But they can make such a transition only at a sufficiently high temperature in the hive. If the outside temperature is less than zero, the club is not capable of movement. Bees are anxious. The club can split, which leads to the death of one or both of its halves.

Stock of feed

Wintering bees in a meadow-grass reduces the consumption of honey. Unified in the club individuals slow down the rhythm of life. Exchange processes in their organisms are less intense. Bees in the feed club need 20 times less than disconnected at the same time. In the first month or two of wintering, they eat up to 700 g of honey for 30 days. By the end of the period, the consumption per month is at least 1.2 kg. If the hibernation of bees in an omshannik has passed unproblematically, and by spring, brood appears in the hive, then the volume of feed doubles.

Leave the frame where the honey is not less than 2 kg and there are free cells in which the bees of the wintering club will be housed. Then it will remain dense, and bees are easier to maintain the temperature with less food intake. In addition to honey (carbohydrates, trace elements), at least 2 frames with perga (protein food) are stored for each family. It is necessary for brood feeding in the spring. Cells with Perga must be preserved - filled with honey, sealed with a wax lid, otherwise the bread will become moldy and spoil.

Fodder honeycomb preparation

For a safe winter, take care of the harvesting of the feeding honeycombs. Beekeeping for beginners is sometimes a difficult task, so treat everything as seriously as possible. Honeycombs harvested in the first half of the season, and the order of installation of frames under the feed depends on the system (design) of the hive. Immediately specify that the honeycomb is not new and not old, and "used" - light brown.

In honeycomb honeycomb honeycomb combs with a printed brood placed in the center of the second building. From multi-housing such honeycombs are exposed in the center of the upper one. The framed frames are not pumped out - they feed for the winter. In the sun beds in front of the main honey collector honeycomb with a printed and open brood is placed side by side in the center, pushing the light and black to the edge of the nest. In the superstructure beehives in the center of the two supplements are placed 4-6 nest frames, and at the edges put half-frames. Bees work out first those honeycombs that are in the center. As soon as the nests are sealed halfway, they are taken from the hive, but honey is not pumped out - this is winter food.

For reference: 43.5 x 30 cm sotoramka holds 4 kg of honey, 43 kg - 23 kg - 3 kg, provided that the cells are filled from one side and the other.

Correct honey

The manual "Beekeeping for Beginners" draws special attention that not every honey is suitable for winter food. To avoid padego toxemia for hibernating bee colonies, it is necessary to leave frames with honey without padi, collected in the first half of the honey collection. If the family hibernates on the honey, then some of its members do not live to see the spring - they begin diarrhea. Survivors contaminate the nest with excrements, which threatens a dangerous parasitic disease - nosematosis.

It is not suitable for wintering rapidly crystallizing honey collected from willow, sunflower, sainfoin, sow, cruciferous plants (rape). It can not be diluted. Hibernating bees with such honey come to restlessness from thirst. The family is weakened or dies of hunger with a reserve of crystallized honey.

When harvesting forage use honeycomb light brown, in which a few generations are derived. They are less heat conductive than light, they better retain heat in the nest, in which the uterus is more willing to lay eggs in the spring. In old honeycombs of black color with the remaining embryos of honey crystals, fresh honey quickly hardens. Wintering will be unsuccessful, because bees need liquid honey. Light honeycombs, in which there were no broods of bees, are cold, the uterus begins to lay eggs in them late, and development of brood in them is delayed in spring.

Feed storage

The stock of feed in the sealed cells is stored in chests with a tight lid, in nest cases, in extensions. The storage area must be dry and cool, not accessible to mice. Before setting up the honeycombs, the bars of the frames are carefully cleaned of contamination: stains of diarrhea, wax growths, propolis.

Oshanik for bees

The site for construction is selected on a dry plot (the depth of groundwater is not closer than 1 m from the floor), on a small slope (for drainage of thawed and rainwater), with protection from winds. The osmotic is rendered inaccessible to mice that destroy a beehive, impenetrable to light and noises, which disturb the bees.

Depending on the conditions of the terrain, buildings can be ground, underground and semi-subterranean. The most common - underground, buried in the height of the walls in the ground. In winter, they will have a steady temperature, in the spring they remain low, which is important for the successful completion of wintering. The walls of the omshanika are brick or butov, the tree is quickly infected with a fungus.

Lack of ground wintering: walls are excessively cooled in winter, and under the spring sun overheat, when the bee is still early to stop wintering. In a terrestrial room, a thermoregulator is needed for the oshanika - it will maintain the set temperature.

In semi-subterranean walls, at half height, they are buried in the ground. Such osmans are usually built on the slope of the mountain.

The osman for bees consists of walls, floor, ceiling ceiling, roof, supply and exhaust ventilation. Inside make racks under the hives. The door opens inside, it is warmed with felt, off the street with roofing iron.

The size of the hibernate determines the type and number of hives. The height from floor to ceiling is 2.5-3 m. Hives are placed on racks or one on top of another. Single-walled takes 0.6 square. M area. Double-walled and hive-lounger - 0,7-0,9 square meters. M. The distance from the walls to the hives is 10 cm, between the rows - 90 cm.

Ventilation and temperature in the oshshnike

Humidity and wintering temperature of bees should be maintained at a constant level. The permissible fluctuations of the latter are from -2 to +4 degrees, but the optimum from 0 to +2. When cold bees eat a larger volume of food, and their intestines are overfilled with feces, diarrhea begins. Excess heat causes them to be very uneasy.

Favorable will be a relative humidity of 75-85%. A higher one will cause the osmosis and hives to mash, excessive - dilution of honey, which makes it sour. When eating sour honey, bees open diarrhea, they weaken and die. Low humidity is not enough to dilute honey, it crystallizes, bees die of thirst and hunger.

Need supply and exhaust ventilation to regulate the humidity and temperature in the oshanike. Fresh air enters through the pipes under the floor, warm with steam is drawn by a pipe on the ceiling and outward under the roof. Adjustment of the inflow and exhaust is carried out by valves. The family needs a hole section of 8 square meters. See From this data and calculate the cross-sectional area of the pipes. If necessary, they are satisfied with several.

Moving to the "winter apartment"

In summer, the osmoshan is dried well, the floor is covered with dry sand, the walls, the ceiling is whitened. Do not rush with the transfer of the hives. In the autumn, warm days are happening to fly over the bees. When to bring bees to winter? Usually in mid-November in the northern and central areas, early December in the southern.

It is permissible to winter bees in the barn, if we insulate its walls, cover the walls of the beehives with mats, provide silence and darkness. Building a real osmoshan is expensive and labor-intensive. The wintering of bees in the barn is more reliable than in the open space under winds and snow. The bee is afraid not of cold, but of hunger, dampness and drafts, and the beekeeper is a thief, if the oshanik is away from home. Features of successful wintering of the apiaries in the barn are different than the wintering of bees in the oshanika.