All tucked in for Winter

Bee hives at Yellow Door Farm

Winter came with a wonderful snowfall this year.  Luckily I had prepared the hives for winter.  Bitter cold followed the snow and so I hope they are all ready.

I experiment with different types of winter wraps each year. I am trying black tar paper this year. It is fairly cheap, easy to work with and black so it absorbs heat. These are some of the properties that make it useful. You need to apply it early in the Fall as it becomes brittle as the weather gets colder.

Notice the electric fence to the right. It goes all around the hives as we have had some bear attacks lately.  I think we also had a deer walk into the wire late in the summer. The hives were not really disturbed but the wire had been snapped off a pole at one end and the wire appeared to be wrapped around a large animal's leg. The animal bolted, and knocked over another hive.  Eventually the wire was released and the animal took off. If it was a bear, it would have come back and started to eat the larva and honey that was in the hive.  Oh boy the challenges never end!