# enough honey to survive winter?



## aprildawn413 (May 25, 2015)

My top bar hive has 2 full bars of honey and each of the other 10 bars has about 2-3 inches of honey. Will this be enough for my bees to make it through winter in southern KY?


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## ruthiesbees (Aug 27, 2013)

it probably depends on the size of the colony and what kind of winter we have. My first winter with bees, it was more like a nuc. It didn't have a ton of bees and it had 6 bars of capped syrup. They only used 2 of them. Most beeks say you need 60+ pounds of honey/syrup to overwinter. If it's too late to feed them 2:1, put a sugar block in the hive for added insurance. I like to hang mine from a mesh bag on an empty bar.


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## jmgi (Jan 15, 2009)

I used to run a few TBH's years ago, and my opinion is that they don't seem to use as much honey through the winter as a regular Lang hive does. That being said, if the other 10 bars have all the honey near the top bars, and only two bars that are full, I would be a little concerned about it being enough, even in your area. It would be better imo if they had at least a couple more bars full. And of course all the full bars should be adjoining each other. You should be able to still feed syrup down your way I would think to get more weight on them before winter.


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## Slow Drone (Apr 19, 2014)

ruthiesbees said:


> it probably depends on the size of the colony and what kind of winter we have. My first winter with bees, it was more like a nuc. It didn't have a ton of bees and it had 6 bars of capped syrup. They only used 2 of them. Most beeks say you need 60+ pounds of honey/syrup to overwinter. If it's too late to feed them 2:1, put a sugar block in the hive for added insurance. I like to hang mine from a mesh bag on an empty bar.


:thumbsup:


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## erikebrown (Oct 27, 2014)

Late to the thread here, but this also depends on the size of your top bars. I assume your 2-3 inches is 1/3 of a full bar, so you have around 5-6 bars worth of honey. (2 + 3.3)

If your combs are the size of medium frames (about 87 sq in) then a full frame is 3-4 pounds of honey and you have around 20 pounds of honey (5.5 x 3.5)
If your combs are the size of deep frames (about 136 sq in) then a full frame is 5-6 pounds of honey and you have around 30 pounds of honey (5.5 x 5.5)

Either way, as Ruthie points out, this is below the recommendations I've seen for winter stores.

Note: you can calculate the size of your comb by figuring out your inside width at the top and bottom of your hive, then the overall inside height of the comb. The comb area is then 1/2 x (top + bottom) x h, that is: one-half of the sum of top and bottom times the height. You lose area to bee space (around 3/8 per side) but this is a working approximation.


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