Hey folks! We have cold weather headed our way for this Friday, and so I went out to the hives to start preparing them.
I made candy boards out of wood shims and hardware cloth. Well, one board anyway. I also experimented with using a plastic netting/wire, which I'll update on in the Spring (I'm hoping it will work out but we shall see!).
I placed the candy boards directly over the frames.
You can see that I drilled a hole through the front to act as an exit in case the lower entrance becomes blocked due to snow.
I added some fondant (not a full tray as it's still early in the year and I don't want to attract pests), and then placed the inner cover over the top. Then I added an empty hive box, which I filled with wood shavings (the same as I use in my chicken coops!).
Next, I attached the mouse guards.
And I want to clarify something here as I realised that my previous mouse guard pics were misleading.
I had originally put my mouse guards on their sides to act as an entrance reducer as this seemed to help with robbing. Here is a pic of that:
What I didn't clarify is that this isn't the proper installation of a mouse guard. This is me just shoving it in there because I didn't want to drill into the hive before I needed to (and when the girls were so pissy!).
Here is how mouse guards should look when correctly attached for the winter:
The yellow plastic slides to allow a better fit and to increase the escape area as needed when the weather improves again and mice are no longer such a risk.
I hope that clarifies things, and my apologies for being unclear! Being a newbee is hard, y'all. We are all just muddling through as best we can! ❤
I wanted to get any prep that involved opening the hives done before the temps really dropped. If the forecasted temps (and even snow!!) hit on Friday, I'll likely go out and wrap the hives.
I hope your hives are doing well and you are ready for the cold weather!
Next week, I'll be releasing my podcast episode on honey so please tune in.
Take care!