Preparing your hives for winter in the Maritimes

As the weather across the Maritimes gets colder, it is time to ready your hives to survive the winter months ahead. Taking care to correctly prepare now will help ensure your colonies thrive in spring. Also careful fall preparation will mean there is little work needed during the cold months. 

Preparing your hives for winter in the Maritimes  

Before the weather gets too cold for opening hives, it is important to check your varroa mite levels. Varroa destructor are one of the biggest threats to honey bee health in Atlantic Canada, especially heading into winter. Even a low Varroa mite infestation in the fall is weaken your honey bees as they cluster up for the winter.¹

Two effective methods to evaluate mite levels are sticky boards and alcohol washes. ATTTA recommends treating if you find 1 mite per 100 bees in an alcohol wash, or over 9 mites in 24-hour period using a sticky board. If numbers are higher than the threshold, treat while temperatures still allow. A good mite treatment for late fall is oxalic acid. This is why many beekeepers in the Maritimes successfully use oxalic acid but there are some other options such as formic acid or Apivar. All are effective in the correct circumstances, but timing and temperature matter. Treating early keeps your colonies healthy and ready to manage the colder weather. 

To survive winter, hives must have food resources. It is estimated, for overwintering in the Maritimes, that full hives should weigh between 41 and 54 kgs (90-120Ibs) going into winter and for a Nuc box, roughly 23kg (50Ibs).^1,2 That weight ensures your honey bees have enough stores to last until spring. If your hives feel light you can feed 2:1 sugar syrup in the fall until it is too cold.¹ Once the nights are consistently freezing, switch to fondant placed under the inner cover. If you come across small or struggling colonies, you should consider combining two weak hives into one stronger unit. This combined hive has a far better chance of keeping warm and surviving throughout the winter.¹ 

Winter Heft Test (ATTTA©2023).

Winter winds and dampness are two of the biggest problems³ for honey bees in the Maritimes. Wrapping your hives with insulated covers helps retain heat. There are a couple of options beekeepers like to use when it comes to wrapping hives. Some beekeepers use black tar or roofing paper which will absorb some heat from the sun. Another common method is bubble wrap and pallet wrap in combination for good insulation and heat absorption. Make sure to not cover upper and lower entrances. Other options include polyurethane hives which do not require winter wrap due to their thermal qualities.⁴ Ventilation is important as moisture buildup can chill a colony. A good setup has a top entrance or vent hole to release moisture while keeping cold drafts out. An upper entrance is one of the most efficient ways to manage humidity.² Some beekeepers use quilt boxes and add insulating materials or wood shavings to absorb excessive moisture to protect the colony. 

Once the snow comes, you will not be opening hives but it is still good to check them. You should gently lift the backs of the hives to check its weight. It is an easy way to tell if your bees are running low on stores without disturbing them. If it feels noticeably lighter, you can add more fondant on a warmer day. Make sure the entrance is not blocked by snow, ice, or dead bees. Keep your shrew guards tight. These little checks might not seem like a lot, but they can prevent losses from moisture, pests, starvation. Winter beekeeping in the Maritimes is all about the preparation. Focus on mite control, feeding, insulation, ventilation, and small mid-winter checks. Each step builds on the next, and when you do it right, your colonies will come out strong and ready for spring. 

Written by Gregory Dugas, ATTTA Seasonal Apiculturist

Connecting with ATTTA Specialists

If you’d like to connect with ATTTA specialists or learn more about our program, you can:

visit our website at https://www.perennia.ca/portfolio-items/honey-bees/

Email attta@perennia.ca

 

 

References 

1. McCallum, R., Menzies, C. 2016. Fall honey bee management guide. Perennia 
2. Melathopoulos, A. 2013. The biology and management of colonies in winter. Canadian Association of Professional Apiculturists.  
3. Phillips EF, Demuth GeoS. 2019. The Preparation of Bees for Outdoor Wintering. Project Gutenberg. 
4. Alburaki, M. and Corona, M. 2021. Polyurethane honey bee hives provide better winter insulation than wooden hives’, Journal of Apicultural Research, 61(2), pp. 190–196. doi: 10.1080/00218839.2021.1999578.

Due to the challenges of producing honey bee queens in a northern climate during early spring, Canadian beekeepers rely on importing queens from other countries, especially early on in the season. This presents various risks to the Canadian beekeeping industry. To help support the Canadian industry and mitigate associated risks with importing queens, studies within Canada have focused on assessing the feasibility of storing queens in banks over the winter. This week’s blog will discuss current research on banking queens in Canada, with a focus on the quality and performance of banked queens. This week’s blog will also provide a brief overview of the Atlantic Tech Transfer Team for Apiculture’s queen production research, recent training opportunities and research plans for 2026.

Banking Queens in Canada: New Canadian Research;
Updates on ATTTA’s Queen Production Research and Initiatives

The availability of local honey bee queens in early spring is a major limiting factor for Canadian beekeepers. Due to Canada’s climate conditions and unavailability of adequate drone populations in the early spring, rearing local queens typically cannot begin until May and June depending on the region of Canada. Currently, Canadian beekeepers rely on queens imported from other parts of the world with warmer climates to meet demand for queens in early spring, which presents various risks to the Canadian beekeeping industry. Associated risks include introduction of various pests and/or diseases, treatment resistant pests and/or diseases, and an overreliance on external industries. To help mitigate associated risks, studies within Canada have focused on assessing the feasibility of storing queens in banks over the winter, with the aim of ensuring their availability in early spring of the following year.

Recently published research completed in Quebec in 2020/2021 aimed to assess the impact of overwintering queen banks on the nutritional and reproductive qualities of queens, as well as their overall performance (Boudreau and Giovenazzo, 2025). In September 2020, researchers prepared 8 queen banks each with 40 individually caged queens. Researchers selected to bank 40 queens per strong double colony as previous research indicated that more than 40 queens can lead to a higher mortality percentage in spring (Rousseau et al., 2019). On October 26, 2020, these queen bank colonies were placed in an indoor wintering facility with conditions previously researched by Rousseau et al., 2019. Additionally, 66 nucleus colonies with a laying queen were overwintered indoors as control queens for the study.

From October 26, 2020, to May 1, 2021, the banked queens had a winter survival rate of 37%, whereas the control queens had a survival rate of 89%. The range of queen survival between the 8 banks was between 11% and 70%. When comparing the control queens and banked queens in Spring 2021, the study found that there was no significant difference in the queen weight, ovary weight, sperm count, sperm viability, hemolymph protein, or vitellogenin percentage, between the two groups.

Researchers also assessed the performance of the surviving banked queens and control queens in newly made nucleus colonies throughout the 2021 beekeeping season. By August 18, 2021 there was no significant difference in the survival of the banked queens and control queens and their colonies. There was also no significant difference in the weight gain between these two groups of colonies. The study did reveal that colonies with banked queens had significantly less brood production during the first month after being introduced to nucleus colonies compared to the control queens.

Overall, this research demonstrated that banked queens and control queens had similar measured parameters for reproduction and nutritional status despite varying survival rates throughout the winter.  Although further research is required to improve queen banking techniques for Canadian winters, this study demonstrated that banked queens are a viable option for beekeepers and has the potential to enhance self-sufficiency in the beekeeping industry.

This past beekeeping season, the ATTTA team did some queen production within their operation to improve upon the team’s queen rearing skills and knowledge. In late June, the ATTTA team set-up two cloake board colonies which were grafted into weekly for five weeks. Produced queens cells were either placed in a mini mating nucleus colony or frozen for future research and/or teaching purposes. Successfully mated queens were either used in queenless colonies within the operation, introduced to newly made nucleus colonies, or frozen for future testing.

ATTTA 2025 mated queen.

In addition to ATTTA’s own steps towards queen production, the team organized and hosted queen production training, taught by guest instructor Alison Van Alten, to help support a sustainable queen production industry within the Maritime region.

This past summer the ATTTA team was able to gain practice in queen production, and has grown their number of colonies to better support queen production next year. The goal for next year will be to continue to grow colony numbers in order to support enough queen production to create a queen bank. ATTTA has previously done queen banking research from 2021 to 2023 and will be in a good position to resume this work next season with the goal of providing information to the Atlantic industry.

References

Lamothe Boudreau, M. and Giovenazzo, P., 2025. Physiological qualities of honey bee queens (Apis mellifera) overwintered in banks. Journal of Apicultural Research, pp.1-13.

Rousseau, A., Giovenazzo, P., Levesque, M., & Houle, E., 2019. Mass storage of honey bee queens overwintered at different temperatures in Canada. Centre de recherche en sciences animales de Deschambault.

Connecting with ATTTA Specialists

If you’d like to connect with ATTTA specialists or learn more about our program, you can:

visit our website at https://www.perennia.ca/portfolio-items/honey-bees/

Email attta@perennia.ca