I forgot to cover the bottom board of the bee hives 😭

[humblehillsfarm]

We're almost a year into bees. Won't call ourselves keepers yet, but I think we'll keep working towards it even if our hives don't overwinter well.

I took a class where the teacher said a lot of keepers use screened bottoms even in extremely harsh winters to reduce moisture build-up, the way people leave chicken coops open.

Our mentor says he can't quite wrap his head around screened bottoms but is a proponent of trying everything once. Different strokes for different hives.

It's been a wild first year for us, too, whew. Bees aren't easy, or cheap. I've been looking at the money spent as "tuition for the school of bees" because this hobby is mind-expanding!

If you do have to replenish next year but don't want to spend the big bucks on nucs or packages, you could put out swarm traps or connect with local keepers who may have more splits than they know what to do with.

If you have bees, you ARE a beekeeper! Welcome to the club! You'll NEVER stop learning.

I took a class when I first started and the instructor said, "With bees you can make a small fortune, but only if you spend a large fortune." Basically, it's a money pit most of the time, but that's not why I started keeping bees in the first place.

Screened bottoms are supposedly useful for helping control hive beetle populations. Not sure how much actual research has been done to document this effect though. I can tell you we've always had hive beetles, but never anything crazy. I once watched a honeybee catch a hive beetle mid-flight, and fly away with it. Honeybees are so incredible!

A quick google search is telling me people are back and forth on keeping the screened bottoms even through the winter. I was in contact with a local beekeeper and she said she knew folks that leave them open through winter. This little scare of mine was the first time I had ever heard of folks keeping the screened bottom open. I thought it had to be closed to help with warmth. I think bees are too expensive for me to want to experiment with something new at the moment!