Wrapping Beehives

Not a bad demonstration of how not to wrap beehives.

00:00 - Preview (with drums).
00:30 - Should I wrap this hive?
01:51 - Silver bubble wrapped hive.
03:03 - Summary of insulated and wrapped hive.
03:33 - Bees tend to crawl into the wrong places.
04:05 - Sheltered hive doesn't need much wrap.
04:43 - Pull the plug and see the bees.
05:14 - "Bee Cozy" hive wrap.
06:04 - Removing telescoping top cover.
06:30 - Baby woodlouse / carpenters.
06:44 - My attempt to install the "Bee Cozy."

Update: I've done more homework. 3 mediums in terms of both volume and height is just about identical 2 deeps. If the Bee Cozy fits well under a 2-deep hive, it should fit my 3-medium hive. I don't know why it didn't fit on this hive. I'll look into it.

07:56 - Beekeeping with only medium supers.
08:35 - Wraps can compromise propolis seal.

How certain beekeepers might take unnecessary offense to certain opinions expressed in this video:

"I've used Bee Cozies for years and they're great. They don't hold moisture close to my hives or break the propolise seal. You don't know what you're talking about."

I have never used a Bee Cozy, but beekeepers who over-winter in two-deep hives and can afford to spend another $30 on each of their hives, fill your boots. Some kind of hive wrap as a windbreak isn't a bad idea. When I do wrap my hives, in my local climate, I prefer a loose-fitting wrap that allows water behind the wrap to evaporate so that the outside of the hive stays dry instead of having moisture held close to the wooden surface all winter.

I've had the propolis seal between supers compromised by outside moisture. A properly tight-fitting Bee Cozy might not have that issue, and it's not the end of the world anyway. But moisture seeping into my winter hives has been an issue since I started beekeeping, so I like to steer away from that possibility if I can.

"I've used deep supers for years and they're great. A single deep is the natural size of a brood nest whereas a medium supers split up the brood nest. You don't know what you're talking about."

I used deep supers for about 10 years because that's what everyone else did, but as a backyard beekeeper working entirely on my own, lifting and hefting everything on my own, deep supers suck. Everything about switching to mediums has been positive for me.

Number 1: Medium supers are lighter (though a full medium of honey isn't what I'd call light, just light-er).

Two: Everything fits. All my boxes, all my frames, whether used for honey or for brood, they fit. Anyone who engages in more involved beekeeping such as queen rearing, nuc production, anything other than just letting the bees be bees, will know that having frames that will always work for whatever you need because they're all the same size is extremely convenient.

Three: Brood nests spread across medium frames are just as healthy and robust as brood nests that over-winter in deeps. A variety of large-frame hive designers claim that a queen living on large frames will expand the brood nest quicker and will over-winter better because the cluster isn't broken apart by the smaller frames of medium supers. I understand how convincing that argument seems to be on paper, but most things in beekeeping aren't true until you try them, and when I finally got around to trying mediums supers in my brood chambers, there was no difference.

An argument could be made that over-wintering in mediums is even better for the bees because the bees don't have to break cluster when moving from one honey frame to another like they would with larger frames.

Frankly, I think if you have good weather and healthy queens, the size of the frames the bees live on doesn't make much difference. Arguments to the contrary may help promote and sell more expensive beehives, but all-medium beekeeping has worked out just well for me as using deeps. If you like hefting deep boxes full of honey on your own, be my guest.

As a backyard beekeeper, not a commercial beekeeper trying to build a beekeeping empire of some sort, I know what I need. I've seen enough to know what works (most of the time).

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