While it’s certainly true that some bees hibernate through the winter, the Carniolan honey bees inside Amanda Skelding’s hives will be a busy bunch.
Inside each one of the 100 hives, located from Niagara Falls and out toward Fort Erie, there are between 30,000 and 40,000 “shivering” honey bees.
From spring to autumn, it’s a repetitive cycle of gathering nectar from trees and plants, turning it into honey back at the hive, humans stealing the liquid gold, and the bees starting over again.
But the honey they produce from the season’s last big nectar source, goldenrod, is left by Skelding for the bees.
On a recent Friday, the first sprinkling of snow began to fall at her parent’s Niagara Falls property, where 30 of her hives sit.
Skelding lifts at the edge of a hive to get a feel for the weight. It’s between 70 and 80 pounds — most of that weight belonging to the abundance of honey inside. Consuming around a pound of honey per week, it’s all the wintering colony will have to see them through the cold.
A few wayward bees emerge from the hives, taking a spin through the falling snow. But it’s not long before they, too, come to terms with winter’s arrival and return to the hive’s promising warmth.
Back inside, the “winter” bees — who hatched last month, have a nearly five-month lifespan, and replace summer bees, that literally work themselves to death — cluster around the queen, fluttering and shivering to generate heat.
Closest to the queen, it reaches 32 C. At the cluster’s outer edge, it’s still a balmy 10 degrees compared to the below freezing temperatures outside.
When the cold does eventually relent throughout the winter, the bees will emerge and take “cleansing flights.”
“They fly out to poop,” Skelding clarifies.
Pointing out toward her parent’s home, she says, “Any truck that’s parked out there, it’s just covered.”
The hives are placed so their entrances are facing eastward for optimal morning sun exposure; and pieces of wood, painted in bright, primary colours, are tacked the front of the hives — they serve as a sort of home address, for bees.
About a week ago, Skelding also wrapped the hives in an insulation. She wants to give them a fighting chance at surviving.
“My anxiety levels for wintering bees is so high, I just cross my fingers and wish them well and hope they pull through the winter,” she says, adding that when you’re a beekeeper, the changing of seasons takes on crucial meaning.
Aside from periodically checking the hives for weight through the winter, Skelding leaves the bees to their own devices.
They have plenty to see them through until life awakens with spring’s bloom, when sugar and silver maple trees are plundered for their pollen and nectar — each bee, one no more important than another, working together for the collective, common good of the colony.
- Jordan Snobelen, Local Journalism Initiative, Niagara This Week