Bundled Bees and Bursting Bellies

Despite pushing toward mid-November, it has not really been cold here yet.  We have been hovering around zero degrees Celsius with a usual warm up in the afternoon.  With today's anticipated snowstorm and tomorrow night's forecast of -8 C, I figured that it might be time to finally wrap my honey bee hives up for winter. 

Bundling them up was really no sweat at all.  I took off the feeder buckets which have been empty for a few weeks, added a spacer on top of the top super, placed a pillow case full of pine shavings in the empty space to absorb excess moisture, added a Styrofoam square to insulate above the inner cover, bundled the hive up in a black plastic insulated bee cosy and tilted each hive forward half an inch. 

 

The biggest challenge a hive faces, aside from mites, is moisture from the bees' breathing condensing on the cold ceiling of the hive and then dripping back onto the cluster.  Hopefully my prophylactic measures will work together to prevent this from happening.  It will also help if the weather cooperates by getting cold and staying cold.

I must say that I am relieved that my beekeeping duties are now done until the new year.  Even though I have upgraded to my largest bee suit, I admit that I was a bit worried about fitting into it today.  Luckily I did, but I am not sure how much longer this would have been possible.

My bee suit was stretched to the max.

My worries are well founded.  Yesterday I literally burst out of my barn jacket.  Not only did my belly explode the zipper but I was then unable to extract myself from the jacket as it remained attached above and below my stomach.  In what I would not classify as my finest moment, I first had to do all my evening farm chores with my belly exposed to the wind.  I then had to wear my jacket in the house until Ian got home and was able to help me free myself from jacket jail.  Thankfully he did so without any smart remarks seeing as I was sweating profusely and my ego was already quite bruised from the whole affair.

Luckily I have a forward thinking Grandma (GG) who is exceptional at finding end of season deals on discount winter coats.  Convenient, I know.  After a quick search of my coat closet I easily found two replacement coats that actually fit my enormous tummy and so both my too small fall jacket and now defective barn coat have been placed out of sight for the time being.

So, in the end, I managed to bundle up both my bees and my belly and not a moment too soon; after our afternoon blizzard it looks like the North Pole out there!