Overwintering Honeybees in Alaska 

Thanks!

Thanks Billy. Great to hear you're bees are doing well. I've overwintered nucs with good success; I want to scale it up this year enough to provide new colonies for our club members next spring.

I know some locals that are planning on using them, but I'm not. My poly langstroth hives have worked so well that I'm not tempted to experiment with other hive types. I'm sure the slovenian hive design would work fine, as long as they were sufficiently insulated. I know someone that got bees through winter in a top bar hive, but he put an amazing amount of insulation in it!

Thanks!

Thanks Rick - I really appreciate it.

Thanks for watching.

I'll put something like that together soon.

Thank you kindly! I'm lucky to have you as a mentor.

@@anchoragebackyardbeekeeping appreciate that Tim

Please share the source of your PH comment. I did a quick search again this morning, and that science seems far from settled. The PH issue seems both plausible (i.e., why not, it's got to be something), and implausible (lowering PH in humans results in a suite of symptoms that gradually get worse as dose increases; mites seem to either die or not die, although dose certainly plays a role there).

Not to be rude but you will need to keep searching and you will find it. it is likely it was usda la. Bee lab or Penn state. This has been old news at least10 to 15 years

@@kevinsteible2027 LOL, don't fall into the stereotypical social media arguing for the sake of arguing. My diligent search on this turned up nothing; just find the link, post it in a comment, and I'll tell everyone that I learned something new from Kevin. But, "with all due respect", it would be irresponsible for me to take your word for something I can't verify.

@@anchoragebackyardbeekeeping

I hope it works out great for you. I like the idea of these longer frames, and Vino Farms dude is pretty convincing. but I don't want to give up what I see are the advantages of running all medium boxes and gear: every frame fits every box, and I can make tiny splits in summer to raise extra queens. I also like being able to grow and shrink the size of my colony in smaller increments than deep boxes, but the bee barn does the same thing with follower boards.

Thanks for watching. Transmission by trophallaxis is less of a problem, but it's still transmission. Varroa change hosts a lot, so each mite is infecting many bees - and the bees themselves are infecting each other. Bees have more defenses against trophallaxis transmission, but are overwhelmed when the load gets high and spreads through both methods.

@@anchoragebackyardbeekeeping I'm receptive to all of that minus "bees infecting bees" as it recycling the problem at question. I'm trying to stay 'no chemical' or "treatment free but smart" as Sam Comfort may say so I use screened bottom boards, cull drone brood, do brood breaks, preform frequent inspections for added mite drop and next may be crisco on the inspection board to possibly mislead mites. I want to manage mites so the bees adapt well enough for me to not use chemicals, organic or otherwise. I need to get down to 'brass tacks' as it were so I can establish cardinal principles with bee keeping and let the bees do the work. PS: your reply was much appreciated and very prompt. Thank you again.

@@atlas4225 Best of luck. I fully support your efforts, and I'm confident that the future of beekeeping is successfully propagating mite resistant stock and getting away from treatments. I started TF, then transitioned to IPM + OA because it was the only way I could consistently get them through our long winters. If I could get resistant stock, I'd go back, but our California suppliers don't select for mite resistant traits. I'm in conversations with a few TF queen suppliers, but for now they don't ship to Alaska.

@@anchoragebackyardbeekeeping Integrated Pest Management is a should be a requirement for anyone applying chemicals, organic or otherwise. As for Oxolic Acid, its an approved method in the US and could prove effective. I know my bees to have been a package made in Georgia and combined with a foreign queen of Southern genetics and sent North. It will take years but I hope to breed more resilient stock into their line. To be totally frank... I don't care about Veroa, but I will manage disease and I will cull a colony that can't toe the line. I haven't purchased bees, including any queens for 3 years and have doubled this year, as I did the previous year. IMP can mean screened bottom boards, brood breaks, harvesting drone brood and regular inspections rather than Forming Acid, Oxolic Acid, Kumafos, Amamtraz, Thimol, etc.

I use the Broodminder temp sensor. I think they're really good, but not perfect. Sometime this summer I'll do a video on how I use them.

Broodminder

They're about $42 each on Broodminder.com. An order of 10 gets the price down to about $37. OA approved for beekeeping isn't available locally. Most hardware stores carry Wood Bleach, which is about 97% Oxalic Acid. The approved OA for beekeeping is about 98% OA. It's important to note that Wood Bleach is not approved for beekeeping, but this is largely because it's cheap, easily available, and the expense of going through the approval process isn't justified by the small profit margin. I pay a bit more and ship up approved OA. I can't recommend Wood Bleach, but I can tell you that beekeepers across the country report using it with the same effect.

I got 100% Oxalic at Spenard on the Parks Hwy and in the paint area. It's in a white bottle. It was not called wood bleach, but Oxalic Acid.

Sort of a tricky question. In general, supers are boxes for honey storage above the brood nest area. I remove all of these when the flow is over. I leave the as much brood nest area as they need. They don't need an extra box of food over their heads; they store all of the winter food they need on the side frames in August, and backfill the brood nest in early September. The goal is to match hive space to colony population. I want my bees a bit crowded going into winter for 2 reasons. First, their population will continue shrinking for another 6-8 weeks as summer bees die. Secondly, excess space makes it harder for them to manage temperature and humidity.

Randy recommends treating them anytime there is no capped brood In Alaska, those times are: 1. 7-9 days after releasing the queen in a new package (before 1st larva are capped) 2. 24 days after splits. When a queen is removed from a colony, all of her eggs will hatch in 24 days (drone lifecycle). The new queen may be laying, but her larva will not be old enough to be capped. 3. After the all winter brood has emerged. That's about October 7-10 here. I wait until mid-month just to be sure.

@anchoragebackyardbeekeeping good to know, what do u recommend for treatments? Thank you

@@denisedee6377 I use oxalic acid vaporization. It doesn't harm brood, and it doesn't persist in honey or comb. Synthetic miticides (i.e., apivar) break down into compounds that do persist in comb. Our relatively short Alaska brood season allows me to completely control varroa by treating during summer brood breaks (usually June) and in fall after all winter brood emerges (2nd week of October).

@@anchoragebackyardbeekeeping thank you

If you're in southcentral Alaska, contact Nathan Broumley at Rigeneration Nutrition in Eagle River. I know he hasn't sold out yet.

Widespread reports of slow buildup, queen failure, and nosema infestation. By far the most problems since I've been keeping bees. Our cold spring certainly played a role, but I'm convinced they were already compromised by the brutal California weather last year.

How could you expect the bees to outrun and grow during the very poor weather you had? Basically impossible. No place could have booming bees under those trying conditions What data backs up the Nosema Claim? How many guts were ripped out and put under the microscope. Love to see pictures off those slides. and the counts. If they were bad who provided the packages.? Having part of our team involved with the National Honey bee survey in July we didn't see that in hives that fell north of the Denali highway line. Delta Junction and Fairbanks had a poor spring but not like Matsu, ANC or down towards Soldatna. It wasn't a banner year like some of the previous ones but considering all they did okay up north. In most cases where they didn't do well it was almost always by those with not enough experience or expertise to maintain and grow bees during poor conditions. In my chats with people it seems that those who either knew what they were doing/ and or had insulated equipment faired much better. Even in Palmer up through willow and talkeetna.they made honey with them. Not goobs but ok. Beekeeping in Alaska needs to be played over the long game. 1 to 2 years will be glorious . 3 to 4 average. 2 below and one or two in 10 will pretty much be failures. Been that way for 50 or 60 years statistically . If you doubt the statistics maybe you can reach out to Hal Livingston in Fairbanks if he's still alive. Last I knew he had to have been the longest continual beekeeper in AK. Probably 60 to 70 years straight.

@@wishicouldspel Thanks for the info - I'll reach out to Hal. Always trying to get more info on the long game here. The nosema claim isn't empty - first suspected by a guy with well over a hundred colonies, then confirmed with sampling. We've had rough springs before, but never right on the heels of equally poor weather in California.

I want to be clear here - I think California package producers are doing the best they can. It's certainly not their fault that spring of 2023 was terrible. But the purpose of my channel (and the specific comment you're responding to) is to promote local sustainability. I get my colonies through winter, year after year, and I want more Alaska beekeepers to know it's possible. Strong overwintered colonies make more honey. They start raising brood by April 1st, 2-3 weeks before the first packages arrive. The early population growth eliminates the need to set up 2 queen colonies, and lets colonies take advantage of our early nectar flow in late May and early June. The specific point I was making here is that, if you overwinter your colonies, you aren't subject to extreme weather events in California.

@@anchoragebackyardbeekeeping I understand. The packages are insanely expensive .. And we produce them. Trust me . we aint making the killing everyone thinks. not eve close. As someone involved with Alaska package bees for over 40 yesrs. ( 42 this year) and even running over 300 on share crop at one point it's very expenseive and a crap shoot at best. a couple of points to consider on the self sustaining effort. 1. can you mate queens there adequately on a consistant basis? lets say end of May to end of July? not last year. barely if at all. 2. Do over wintered colonies actually coats less when feed and time are included? all thats not inexpensive either. 3. What evidnece points towards any fact that overwintered colonies out produce packages in the honey production category? especially hard double blimd comparisons. Having produced and sold tens of thousand of packages to alaska and given perpetual advice and pointers on overwintering ts a crap shoot at best from my observation. Historically over wintering in the shortest winter wsrmest climate ( Kena for your area) seems to give the best results. Short winters help . If mite counts are low I. late July that is. .At 15 dollara a pound it only takes an extra 15 to 20 lbs to pay for a package. if honey producrio is your goal. I think they do. 4. I'm never one to bet against anyone succeeding. with the price and nominal unavailbiluy of Pure Alaskan honey I've always wondered why someone hasnt gone latge Comericisl ( 3 to 5 hundted colonies for AK ) and mafe a living off of them by overwintering bees.ad part of the process. Its a topuc I've pondered often. ( since settting. foot myself first time in 83 ) Doing so in your area is bettee than north of you.or out copper river area. Aleays an intwresring topic. aleays. Im out of here for now.. Puttiing on pollen sub to build health bees for AK . shipping starts in just a few short months.

I've heard of a few, but I don't know of anyone that has good overwintering success with them. Once that happens, I'll get more interested.

email me at AnchorageBackyardBeekeeping@gmail.com

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