It has been unusually chilly in our part of the world over the past couple of weeks. We have had one of our rare West Coast snowfalls and the night time temperatures have been dipping well below zero. This is creating a new learning experience for us keeping bees and we have been working hard to keep our hives bundled up and cozy.

All of our hives are fitted with blanket boxes and we have switch to a hard sugar block style of feeding since liquid syrup would be at risk of freezing in this temperatures. Our hives are further bundled up in winter pyjamas made of insulating tarps which both keep them warm and keep the driving rain off.

Even in this chilly weather however, our girls continue to fly on the sunny days. Hopefully we have helped them keep a toasty warm hive to return to after their winter flights.

This is our first really cold winter keeping bees and we’ve done our best to bundle up the hives to protect the bees from the freeze. We don’t open the hives at this time of year since doing so would let in the cold. As such, the only information we have about how they are doing comes on sunny days when see them coming out for a fly. So far they all seem to be active. We have our fingers tightly crossed that we all make it through this period of cold and survive to enjoy another spring.