A Year in the Bee Yard

One of the things I didn’t fully understand before keeping bees is how much hive management changes throughout the year. The bees are doing different things each season, which means I’m doing different things, too. I figured I’d share a snapshot of a year of beekeeping so you can see how the work changes through the seasons.

Winter is mostly about survival for the bees. I try to interfere as little as possible, but I’m still keeping an eye on food stores and moisture inside the hive. I wrap the hives in tar paper to help block the wind, reduce the entrances to make the hive easier to protect, and add a quilt box filled with wood chips on top to help manage condensation and provide some insulation. If they need extra food, I add a white sugar-based fondant they can easily chew through. Winter is also when I clean, repair, and build equipment for the next season.

Spring gets much busier. I’m dewinterizing the hives, pulling off the extra covers, widening the entrances, checking how the colonies came through winter, and sometimes swapping box positions to encourage the bees to move through more of the hive. Depending on the colony, spring can also mean making splits, feeding 1:1 syrup, adding pollen patties, and watching brood patterns to get a sense of what’s happening inside the hive. 

Summer is mostly about keeping up with them. I’m adding honey supers as they fill them, checking for queen activity, managing swarm pressure, and keeping an eye on pests. A strong hive can fill space surprisingly quickly, so sometimes the biggest job is simply making sure they have enough room. One year, I had a hive fill an entire medium box with nectar—about 40 pounds—in around 10 days! Just in case they decide they need even more room, this is also the time of year when I put out swarm traps.

Fall is all about getting the healthiest, fullest hive possible going into winter. I harvest the excess honey from the supers, start mite treatments, and then pay close attention to what the bees have left in storage. If they need some help building those stores, I’ll feed a heavier 2:1 syrup, while still keeping an eye on space and possible late-season swarm behavior.

Since I’m monitoring food stores, I have a very unscientific—but very quick—way of checking how “full” a hive feels. I gently tilt one side of the hive up to get a sense of how heavy it is. If I can move it easily with one hand, they need to be fed right away. If it’s hard with one hand, I figure they’re roughly 30% of the way there. If it feels okay with two hands, maybe 50%. And if it’s genuinely hard to tilt with both hands, I’m much happier with their winter stores. It only takes a few seconds and gives me a quick idea of whether feeding is necessary. 

The bees themselves change through the seasons too. When there’s plenty of nectar coming in and the hive is feeling “fat and sassy,” they can be surprisingly easygoing. During honey harvest, a nectar dearth, or other times when resources are tighter, they can be much more defensive—which is a pretty fair reaction when you think about me standing there taking apart their pantry.

If you have ever thought about becoming a beekeeper, I cannot recommend taking a class highly enough. The Iowa Honey Producers Association offers very affordable winter classes taught by some of the top honey producers in the state. You’ll learn the basics you need to get started, how to troubleshoot problems in the hive, meet other beekeepers, and learn where to source bees, equipment, and supplies. 

Beekeeping is one of those things I really wouldn’t recommend trying to figure out completely on your own—it’s too expensive to learn every lesson the hard way!