# Overwintering Small Colonies in a TBH



## Nordak (Jun 17, 2016)

I have had a different kind of year, and unfortunately a couple of my splits have never really taken off. I've got a couple of 8-10 bar colonies I am considering overwintering in a standard TBH, seperated with tight coroplast division boards to house 3 colonies, as comb production has dropped to nihil and don't see this changing for the remainder of the year. Has anyone tried this with success? Would be similar to overwintering lang nucs, only from a horizontal standpoint. I would imagine the only issue I see is the additional warmth may keep them active and allow them to burn through stores faster. I have manufactured some candy board frames I could utilize for this purpose if necessary. Additional moisture created from housing that many colonies could be another potential issue, but could offset with ventilation. At our coldest, we get into the single digits, but not very often. Lows are more often around teens to 20F. Thoughts?


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## Nordak (Jun 17, 2016)

Thought I was in the TBH forum, apologies in advance.


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## ethanhogan (Jun 1, 2016)

Why not feed them some sugar syrup?? Not the best but should let them draw more comb


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## ruthiesbees (Aug 27, 2013)

not sure how your winters compare to mine. this part of VA, we don't get too terribly cold except for a week or two in late Jan. I've been able to overwinter 3 bar nucs that are housed in a 5 frame Lang box pushed together to form little condos to conserve heat (they were just the topbar combs in Langs. The rectangle shape lets me push them together and not make them share a floor where the queen pheromones might mix. I also put little windows in the nucs so I could peak. I also put a medium box on top which gave me extra room for a sugar cake or short syrup feeder.

I went to the added step of putting a heater in 2 of them (warmbees.com) Those burned through the stores faster so I had to keep adding syrup or sugar cakes, but they survived the winter and gave me early spring queens for splits, which was the purpose of my experiment.

The only time I've tried having 2 colonies in one big TBH was a failure for me. Had them all migrate over to one side. Maybe if it was a solid bottom, it would have turned out better.


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## Nordak (Jun 17, 2016)

ethanhogan said:


> Why not feed them some sugar syrup?? Not the best but should let them draw more comb


One of the issues I am having is back filling of the brood nest, as a lot of my queens have slowed down laying due to lack of forage, which only exacerbated the issue of not enough young bees wanting to build comb. That and timing of mating flights, failed flights, getting built back up to speed. It's been a different and challenging year, but I suppose without these we don't learn how to handle them when they come up. Lack of early management has had a lot to do with my current situation. Next year I will be much more preemptive in management, as I had been last year.


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## Nordak (Jun 17, 2016)

ruthiesbees said:


> not sure how your winters compare to mine. this part of VA, we don't get too terribly cold except for a week or two in late Jan. I've been able to overwinter 3 bar nucs that are housed in a 5 frame Lang box pushed together to form little condos to conserve heat (they were just the topbar combs in Langs. The rectangle shape lets me push them together and not make them share a floor where the queen pheromones might mix. I also put little windows in the nucs so I could peak. I also put a medium box on top which gave me extra room for a sugar cake or short syrup feeder.
> 
> I went to the added step of putting a heater in 2 of them (warmbees.com) Those burned through the stores faster so I had to keep adding syrup or sugar cakes, but they survived the winter and gave me early spring queens for splits, which was the purpose of my experiment.
> 
> The only time I've tried having 2 colonies in one big TBH was a failure for me. Had them all migrate over to one side. Maybe if it was a solid bottom, it would have turned out better.


Hmm, that gives me an idea. I have a couple of small nuc sized boxes that would stack as they are done Chandler style. They have screened bottoms. If I used a ventilation bar, the bees could push air into the top box, which could also have a ventilated bar for moisture withdrawal. 

Given my climate, I might just try to let them winter seperately.


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