Hi all

I visited Guelph Ontario last year and Paul Kelly explained one box wintering to me. I knew that one hundred years ago it was very common to winter bees in one ten frame deep or even one eight frame deep, especially when wintering in cellars. A one story unit is perfectly adequate for the amount of honey and bees that is optimum for wintering. 



Somewhere in the early part of the 20th century beekeepers began to move toward a two story unit to accommodate the larger colonies they were raising due to improved management techniques and the general use of larger hives (two stories for brood instead of one). In the forties researchers like Farrar advocated the three story unit for winter, with a super and a half (90lbs net) of honey. 



But the Ontario beekeepers have basically shown that they can produce a very good crop of honey by confining the queen to the first story with an excluder and adding as many supers as the bees can fill. In fall, they take off all the honey and feed the one story units until they are full of syrup. So it definitely works. Whether this, that, or the other technique is best for you is for you to try it and decide. I still winter bees in two deeps and don’t use excluders at all.



Pete



             ***********************************************

The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned

LISTSERV(R) list management software.  For more information, go to:

http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html