# running single brood chambers for winter



## biggraham610 (Jun 26, 2013)

I look forward to hearing any advice as I will be wintering several singles as well. G


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## JodieToadie (Dec 26, 2013)

I am not familiar with outdoor wintering in singles. But I have done it successfully indoors. If you wrapped the colonies and insulated I would imagine the same numbers would apply. Here is a link to the data.

http://capabees.org/content/uploads/2013/02/indoorwinteringrequirements.pdf

http://capabees.org/content/uploads/2013/02/winteringpdf.pdf

As for summer management. I manage the main honey flow in singles. With a queen excluder above. Just make sure you have a full 9-10 brood frames in the bottom super for the queen to lay in. 
I usually keep supering and let the queen do whatever she wants until the main flow. Then I move her and most of the brood down to the bottom box and put an excluder above. If you leave brood above the excluder it keeps the bees working above the excluder and it appears to be easier to draw comb as well. I have been drawing comb all season, and checkerboarded comb in the two supers above the excluder is the best location for getting it drawn. I had no luck in the brood chamber whatsoever.

Sometimes the excluder will cause a second queen to be reared in the honey chamber with the leftover brood. I keep a top entrance so she gets mated and I end up with a few 2 queen hives that I split off as I find them. I do not think it is viable to run without excluders unless you have more time than money. I have more money than time so I run exlcuders. 


But that is my opinion.


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## RAK (May 2, 2010)

These are some interesting reads

http://www.pedersenapiaries.ca/wintering_singles.html

http://www.pedersenapiaries.ca/revisited.html


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## jim lyon (Feb 19, 2006)

JodieToadie said:


> I do not think it is viable to run without excluders unless you have more time than money. I have more money than time so I run exlcuders.
> 
> 
> But that is my opinion.


Nice informative post but those last couple of lines say it best
:lpf:


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## Ben Little (Apr 9, 2012)

Just finished reading the links you all posted, good reading material. I don't know if it is a good idea to try any singles this year or not, I know next year I will be running singles for honey for sure  I just can't figure out if I want to shake all the bees down to 1 box and put all of the brood down, or winter them in doubles .. I am a bit on edge when it comes to trying something risky with bees going into winter.


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## jean-marc (Jan 13, 2005)

You could put the excluder now and shake her down into box 1. They still have 2 generations before winter maybe 3. That should give them time to reorganize the brood nest. Do it on 25% of your hives to try it out if you feel nervous. If you do it tomorrow then 3 weeks later all the brood will have hatched and you can pull and extract whatever honey is in box number 2. This way you have a bit of wintering experience for next year before you go all in.

Jean-Marc


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## zhiv9 (Aug 3, 2012)

We can run them here in Ontario and they winter well, but you have to feed. They will have very little stores when we pull the supers in a couple of weeks. They need to fed up to 90-100lbs. So you will save on equipment, but your feeding costs both monetary and time will go up. They are more challenging to keep on top of swarming. Especially with new foundation above an excluder bees in a single are far more likely to move up. With a double you almost always need some bait comb. Singles will often leave a an empty half moon section in the center of the first super and queens squeeze though the excluder more often. It's much nice trying to find the queen in a single. I also think local northern queens that are conservative and cluster tightly help a lot with singles.


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## Ian (Jan 16, 2003)

Ben, I would stick to wintering them in doubles this year, then change your management strategy next year if you please. 

The trick is to shake her down as your flow starts, so that they backfill the second for you to harvest. This system probably would work good for you as the hives would be doubled up during your pollination work, then shaken down into singles after as you move to your flows


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## chillardbee (May 26, 2005)

There never seems to be a year when I'm not overwintering a certian amount of singles and there were some years where I overwintered nothing but singles. Our weather here is mild enough to not need a wrap for winter. After clearing the honey boxes, the singles are light and have next to no stores so they need feed and lots of it.

If your planning to run singles for honey and then overwintering the single, be prepared to feed them a pail or 2 of syrup. As the single builds up in the spring, you might need to feed more too.

In my experience, when the singles are in full swing of honey production, there is 8+ full frames of brood with the rest being pollen with the only place to put the honey being above the excluder. I've hauled 5-6 standards of of them in good years.


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## JodieToadie (Dec 26, 2013)

One note about wintering singles. I would imagine it is true indoors or outdoors. The real 'trick' unless you are feeding is to get the brood nest very small for winter. It is not only that the bees need enough stores, it is also that the brood nest is small enough that the queen can't continue to rear brood and run the hive out of stores. 
Again my opinion and observation.
I have checked the last two winters. Most hives have a small amount of brood at all times. I have observed that if the queen has room and there is a climate trigger she will start rearing more brood depending on room, honey and of course pollen. 

So the number might not work for outdoor wintering but with my equipment (super, lid, bottom) = around 34-38lbs. Bees weigh 4-6lbs. My target weight for the hive, bees and stores is 80lbs. With most hives that get me through 6 months of winter and still leaves a bit of stores in spring. 
Temperature will play a huge role in storage consumption and survival. If you are going to the labour expense and hassle of wrapping perhaps you might want to consider indoor wintering. 'Control what you can' so to speak.


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## Roland (Dec 14, 2008)

Jodie, I suspect that the OP has considerably colder winters than you do. It appears that his are not as cold as here in S.E. Wisconsin, but nearly so. I would be surprised if he has brood much later than the first frost, which I would guess would be in November. 

Would the OP please reply with average first frost date, and average first dandelion/and or first brood date?

Crazy Roland


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## Ian (Jan 16, 2003)

JodieToadie said:


> might want to consider indoor wintering. 'Control what you can' so to speak.


If I had winters like Ben's, id be wintering outdoors


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## JodieToadie (Dec 26, 2013)

I suppose, he's only got four months below zero. But Ian weren't you the guy who said you hated wrapping hives?


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## Ian (Jan 16, 2003)

JodieToadie said:


> I suppose, he's only got four months below zero. But Ian weren't you the guy who said you hated wrapping hives?


oh ya, I hate wrapping hives... lol
Ben would need a cooling unit on his wintering facility to sleep well at night


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## Ben Little (Apr 9, 2012)

Our first frost will probably be last week of October first of Nov. The last frost usually at the end of April. So We have an average of 5-6 months of Frost.


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## Ben Little (Apr 9, 2012)

Ian said:


> oh ya, I hate wrapping hives... lol
> Ben would need a cooling unit on his wintering facility to sleep well at night


I have seen 2 different sized operations that winter inside and the smaller one has a big refer unit on one side of the building and exhaust fans on the other. I am not sure of the type of investment it would be to build such a facility but I can imagine it would be worth it considering a person wouldn't have to worry what the weather was doing or if the bees were buried in snow etc..etc.. If I have the money later on after building our Honey House and storage for equipment I will have a serious look at wintering inside  Until then it is outside for me.

The Bigger facility that I saw I didn't even know it was a wintering building, I didn't see any fans or anything. I might have to take a better look if I go again LOL


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## JodieToadie (Dec 26, 2013)

Well I am just a small beekeeper, I wintered just under 100 hives last year in a building that was 24x12x8 it has two stages of cooling fans, a circulating fan, a heater and red lights. It is only insulated r-12. As I could not afford big facilities and needed a dual purpose building it double as my heat room. It could hold more than 400 honey supers stacked 5 high. 
I think it cost a total of $5500. My winter losses in a climate controlled building are basically nil. (1 hive in 2 years so far...) So I figure it has already paid for itself. (Outdoors in my climate 30% would be a 'normal' loss.) So if you figure 12 nucs the first year and 32 the second @ $150 bucks then the building was free. I will warn you very clearly that heat is the enemy for indoor wintering. If the weather climbs you need to be prepared to get the hives out ASAP. 
Other thoughts:
Secondarily winter wraps aren't free either and they take a lot of time to prepare. 
A single in a climate controlled building uses relatively small amounts of feed. Come spring it will build and be the same size as an overwintered double by the time the honey flow is started.
A single is also nicer to medicate and exposes less frames to treatments. 
A single is much nicer to lift and move.


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## Ian (Jan 16, 2003)

I built my hot room extra large to handle my wintering capacity. I have had beekeepers tell me my hot room is too big, 45'*50'. This year I have used every square foot of it, and that was just for holding surplus honey boxes, now that the honey is slowing Im using some space for temporary storage space.

Moral the story, don't let anyone tell you how to set up your operation. But use the input from everyone to help set up your operation.


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## Ben Little (Apr 9, 2012)

Thanks everyone, I will try to figure out what best suits our "needs" and deal with the "wants" when I can afford them.

First on the list is a piece of land to build on


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## PerryBee (Dec 3, 2007)

Ben, send an email to Daniel Ficza of Honey Dew Apiaries in PEI. He lived in Hantsport before moving to the Island a few years ago, and he runs singles over winter in PEI. I saw pics of some of his stuff at our AGM a few years ago. He took pictures just at the beginning of March to take to the AGM and his singles were jammed. He's a really decent guy to talk to.
http://thelocaltravelerns.com/2013/07/28/honeydew-apiaries-canoe-cove-pei/


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## Ben Little (Apr 9, 2012)

Thanks, I was talking to him at the Maritime Bee Tour in NB last weekend and Boyd , I think there is a way to do singles outside, I just want all the information I can get.


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## pascal (Oct 1, 2010)

I'm running doubles and singles in quebec (Lat. 45) with similar winter losses (average 15%). Simply the single, if the colony is big, get short on food around mid march. Anyway, I always start candys and subs around the end of the first week of march. This not always necessary, but it calm me down. I prefer doubles because it's more secure. Surprisingly, the colonies in double and singles are not very different in spring, simply, I invert the doubles at a time and add a box to the single generally same time.
I will also say that singles are more easy at the time to clean the bottom board or remove the dead-outs.


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## aran (May 20, 2015)

i think im going to try a few hives in Skaneateles NY this coming season in singles and see how they do.
I have noticed in the last couple years that the survival on my large hives is very good (100% this year albeit we are only talking about 15 hives) but the overwintering nucs 4/4 didnt winter as well.
I guess i could always split the difference and leave the single brood chamber hives with a medium super of honey on top of them to make sure they have enough feed for the winters.
I wrap with tar paper and foam insulation and have all my hives pushed together for winter and it seems to work quite well when the bloody wind isnt pushing hives off their stands!!


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