This section is from the book "How To Keep Bees And Sell Honey", by Walter T. Kelley. Also available from Amazon: How To Keep Bees And Sell Honey.
In the Northern States bees were formerly put in cellars or packed with several inches of leaves or straw. Little packing is done now as far north as southern Wisconsin. It has been found that packing seals the cold in the hives so that the bees do not warm up when the sun does shine and they are too cold to move over to a fresh patch of honey and starve to death with plenty of honey nearby.
The top entrance is one of the major advances of recent years. It is a hole (usually 5/8 to 3/4 inch) bored near the top of the hive. This hole permits the moist air to escape and this ventilation keeps the inside of the hive dry. This hole should be kept open the year around, even in the far North.
The common method of preparing colonies for winter in the Northern States is to leave the colonies with two or more hive bodies full of honey and pollen. A top entrance is bored in the upper hive body near but not in the hand hold, and the colonies are wrapped in 15 pound black felt building paper, in such a way as to shed rain and snow, then tied with string with an opening made for the top entrance. The entrance block is put in place to keep the mice out of the hive.
The top entrance permits the moist air in the hive to escape and thereby keeps the inside of the hive dry. With no top entrance in a tight hive it has been found that the bees often freeze and drown in the moisture that they have produced. Beekeepers may prefer tight hives with no entrance except on the bottom board but the bees actually winter better in hives with one or more openings near the top.
The black building paper absorbs heat from the sun's rays and warms up the hives when the sun comes out, even on cold winter days, enabling the bees to move their cluster to a new area of honey.
Wrapping with black felt south of St. Louis and Indianapolis is not commonly practiced except in mountainous regions but a top entrance will be found to be of real value wherever bees are kept, not only during the winter but throughout the year.
It is very important that the hives be placed so that the sun will shine directly on them during the winter months. Located on the north side of a building or under a shelter where the sun cannot directly strike the hive is a sure cause for loss.
In the Northern States the hives should be wrapped with 15 pound asphalt felt in a manner to shed the rain, the entrance blocks inserted and an outlet made for the top entrance.
A windbreak is very helpful in wintering bees. This can be in the form of a building, board or stone fence, hedge, woods, hill, etc. Colonies placed on the south side of any such a windbreak have a much better chance of wintering successfully.
Bees must take a cleansing flight every month or 6 weeks during the winter and on sunshiny days, even when the ground is covered with snow you will see them taking these short flights. A windbreak gives the bees a protected area where they can take these short flights and safely return, even during the dead of winter, while without a windbreak many will become chilled and not make it back to the hive.
WARNING: Beginners should not attempt to feed their bees during the winter months as they will do more harm than good. Leave plenty of stores on your hives in the fall, preferably two hive bodies solid with honey and pollen and you will have no wintering problem from the food standpoint.
With the arrival of the first killing frost in the fall the bees' work comes to an end and then the beekeeper should prepare the hives for winter by reducing the entrances, boring top ventilation entrances and seeing that each colony has sufficient stores to last until the first good honey flow in the spring.
In this honey house Conrad Kruse of Log-ansville, Wisconsin, extracts his honey crop from his 2, 000 colonies in the North. He spends the 6 warmer months of each year in Wisconsin.
For the past 35 years Conrad Kruse of Logansville, Wisconsin, has spent his winters in Florida where he keeps an additional 1, 000 colonies under the palm and date trees and in citrus groves there.
Then if the beekeeper has his honey crop sold, no children in school or other work he had better plan to go South to spend the winter as there is practically nothing that he can do with or for the bees; in fact the less he does to the bees during this dormant period the better.
Many northern beekeepers go South annually for part or all of the winter. Some beekeepers move hundreds of colonies South in the fall, secure a honey crop and move the bees back North in the spring in time for the clover honey flow. Many such operations are profitable and have been carried on over a long period of years. Other beekeepers have permanent apiaries both in the North and South and do only a minimum amount of trucking between the two points. But read for yourself what one of these beekeepers says:
Conrad Kruse, Logansville, Wisconsin says, "I bought my first colony of bees in 1912 for $3. 00 and now I have 2, 017 in Wisconsin and about 1, 000 in Florida in about 100 bee yards. The bees in Wisconsin do well but with the new method of wintering they need no attention from October to April (a full 6 months).
"The 5 or 6 months that I have spent in Florida for the past 35 years have been a vacation to me. Working with my bees in the warm Florida sunshine and eating the tree-ripened fruit is like a tonic and it keeps me in prime condition for my year around work with the bees. "
Drones are the worst enemy of the box-hive beekeeper because he has no control over their production. They are the large male bees that have enormous appetites. In the box hives they consume much of the surplus honey. By using full sheets of comb foundation in the frames of the modern hives the number of drones can be reduced to a very small number while in box-hives there may be hundreds of these big hardy eaters.
This apiary, which contained 30 colonies, produced over 7, 000 pounds of surplus honey during the spring flow of 1948 in southern Kentucky, a territory where ordinarily bees are kept in one-story brood nests and only one shallow super is supplied. This shows the desirability of large brood nests and plenty of super space.
 
Continue to: