Cold-Climate Beekeeping and Winter Feeding Insights with Etienne Tardif (368)

368 - Cold-Climate Beekeeping and Winter Feeding Insights with Etienne Tardif

Jeff Ott: Welcome to Beekeeping Today Podcast presented by Betterbee, your source for beekeeping news, information, and entertainment. I'm Jeff Ott.

Becky Masterman: I'm Becky Masterman.

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Jeff: Hey, a quick shout-out to Betterbee and all of our sponsors whose support allows us to bring you this podcast each week without resorting to a fee-based subscription. We don't want that, and we know you don't either. Be sure to check out all of our content on the website. There, you can read up on all of our guests, read our blog on the various aspects and observations about beekeeping, search for, download, and listen to over 300 past episodes, read episode transcripts, leave comments and feedback on each episode, and check on podcast specials from our sponsors. You can find it all at www.beekeepingtoday.com. Hey, everybody, welcome to the podcast. Hey, Becky, how are you doing?

Becky: I'm doing very, very well. I am planning 2026 as we speak because that's pretty much all I think about these days, is bees. [laughter] How about you? Do you have anything else on your mind?

[laughter]

Jeff: January, this early January, mid-January. We just got back from NAHBE, but don't ask us about it because we in truth haven't been there yet. [laughter] We're recording this before NAHBE, but that aside, January is a great time for thinking about bees. It's a natural time beekeepers through the holidays, and we start thinking, "What's the spring going to look like? How am I going to expand my yard? Will I need to expand the yard? I know I have a couple of dead outs. I know I'll have a couple that'll make it through the winter, so I want to split those." You start planning all this in your head, well, at least I do it 4:00 AM in the morning. It's an exciting time of year.

Becky: I do the spreadsheet because I really like to plan my queens now. This is year two of really planning my queens as far as making sure that I have the variety that I want, and then I time them so that they arrive at different times so that I can handle the ones that come in, and I have a place for them. It's a really fun effort to figure out what the bees are going to look like this year.

Jeff: You did that last year. Did you have any surprises last year as you look back at it, or anything that didn't work out the way you wanted to?

Becky: It was really fun because I got Caucasian queens for the first time. I got some Buckfast queens, so I'm still figuring it out. My Caucasian queens, I don't know how they did because it's January, so I don't know how well they did, but I'm really excited to see if they did survive just because there was a point at time where they shrank their population, which is what they do. They conserve their resources, they shrank their population. Not like an event from varroa or anything like that, but it was just a really interesting dynamic to see. I'm excited about that.

Oh my gosh, Golden West Queens, Randy Oliver's queens, some of the most populous, heaviest colonies I had going into winter were Golden West Queens. They did not need to be fed, so that was fun.

Jeff: That's neat.

Becky: Wait, how long have I been talking about this? Did I start going at it? [laughs]

Jeff: It's not an ad for Golden West bees. I'm looking forward to this, and it's an exciting time of year. Like you said, you can really get down in the weeds as to what you want to do and how we want to do it. That brings us to our HiveIQ question of the week.

Becky: Excellent. More hive tools to give away. HiveIQ has been so generous. This is exciting. I love this part of the show.

Jeff: The HiveIQ tool, it's just a hive tool. The HiveIQ--

Becky: Just a hive tool.

Jeff: Just a hive tool. HiveIQ has so much more to offer for beekeepers, the whole system. I have three of those in it that I purchased, they are not given to me, that I use and I like. I know several beekeepers around here, including a sideliner who uses them and just really loves them. That aside--

Becky: I know you want to get to the question, but you've just teased the HiveIQ setup. [laughs] You've got beekeepers saying, "Wait, wait, what's special about it?" [laughs] Can you just give them a sentence? [laughs]

Jeff: Sure, sure. No, the HiveIQ hive is a nine-frame box. It's made out of expanded polystyrene, the sides, the bottoms, all the boxes, the hive bodies, the supers, the top, and the bottom board. Then, along with the expanded polystyrene boards, they put the plastic in between. It's a really heavy-duty plastic that you can use the hive tool in to prime apart. It's really nice because they do come apart a lot easier than the wooden hives. Because it's a well-insulated hive, it's not ventilated, it becomes a condensing hive. It's fun to experiment with that. I really like the setup, and it looks really nice in a bee yard.

Becky: It has a higher R-factor, so the bees have to work less in the winter and the summer. Is that the theory?

Jeff: Yes, it does. You can see that in both the colony, the cluster in the fall. I don't open often in the wintertime, but in the fall and the cooler days, you can see that they're all over in the hive, whereas the other colonies in the wooden boxes are in a cluster. It's fun to see the differences in the colonies.

Becky: Okay. Now to the question.

[laughter]

Jeff: Now to the question. We have John Liu from Northern Illinois with this question about mated queens and what he should do. Let's just listen to it instead of me recapping it.

John Liu: Hi, my name is John Liu from Northern Illinois. My question is, can you get the best of both worlds from having a single queen that is mated with drones of many different races, including Russians, Carniolans, and Italians, therefore getting the benefits of wintering in small clusters of Carniolans, having spring buildups that the Russians do, and having the huge populations that the Italians do, therefore getting the perfect colony with a queen that has diversified her drone-mating population? Thanks very much.

Jeff: That's a great question, Becky. Is he just talking about what some beekeepers call mutts?

Becky: It sounds like he would love it if that actually did work, and if you had a queen mate with a variety of different genetics, that the perfect combination would happen. He also, I think, knows that in order for that to happen, it probably has to be a very strategic approach. Anytime you are doing any kind of selection for traits, it is a journey. It is a long journey in order to find the colonies and see if they express the traits that you're looking for, and then go ahead and figure out how to repeat it.

I'm guessing that if it happened for John one time, that wouldn't be enough, but he's looking for maybe that perfect queen that gives him those properties over and over again. Multiple different queens that would do that. It's interesting because, for example, he mentioned Russian, and that's a line of bees, and that's from Caucasian bees and Apis mellifera mellifera, which is a bee that I know we have the genetics in the US, but you can't buy that direct subspecies. Another example is Buckfast. Buckfast has a little bit of Italian in it, and also Apis mellifera mellifera.

A lot of people, when they're looking to breed bees, sometimes they just look for those characters, and they might look among the subspecies, and then try to find the bees that best show the characters that they want. I would suggest that John starts by trying some of the different lines of bees. He might want to try Saskatraz. He might want to try something like Golden West. A lot of the lines of bees that are out there right now are really, really geared towards varroa, and helping to control varroa. He might just find something he likes in those lines also, and be able to maybe find that perfect bee.

He might also find that you need maybe a variety in your apiary, and then you'll have maybe that perfect bee, because what happens is that the weather impacts how those bees are going to winter, how they're going to start brooding up. Not every season's the same. Sometimes that variety is the way to do it.

Jeff: Very interesting question. Thanks for it, John. It's a great time of year to start thinking about what kind of bees you want in the spring and how you want to handle the new season.

Becky: Agreed.

Jeff: Besides the new season coming up, we have to finish out this year in the winter. Our guest today knows the cold weather really well.

Becky: I love talking to today's guest. Etienne is just such a resource as far as what bees are doing in the cold. [laughter] He definitely has a handle on it.

Jeff: Etienne is from Yukon, north of 66th parallel. If you look at a map and look at where Yukon is, you'll see it's very cold up there. Etienne will be with us right after these words from our sponsors.

[music]

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Jeff: Hey, everybody, welcome back. Sitting around the great big virtual Beekeeping Today Podcast table, way up somewhere in Canada, we have Etienne Tardif. Becky's sitting in Saint Paul, and I'm in Olympia. Etienne, welcome back to the show.

Etienne Tardif: Pleasure.

Becky: Thank you so much for joining us.

Etienne: Happy to be here.

Jeff: Etienne, where in Canada are you?

Etienne: I guess in the last week and a half, I left from the Yukon, so next to Alaska, flew down to Vancouver, and then flew right across to Newfoundland. Labrador, it's called. I spent about a week in Labrador, and now I flew to Central Canada. I'm in Ontario, and I'm close to James Bay in the northern part of Ontario.

Jeff: You like all the cold places.

Etienne: I guess that's where my work takes me. [laughter] It's northern cold places.

Jeff: Well, cold is why we've asked you to join us. You had a really interesting post recently in December on BL regarding feeding your bees fondant and noticing different temperature. For our listeners who haven't heard you on our podcast in the past, can you please tell us a little bit, just real briefly, about yourself, your experience with bees, and then we'll get into the whole feeding in the winter.

Etienne: I keep bees up in the Yukon. I've been keeping bees for the last 12 years in the Yukon. I started in another place several years before that. I take a very data-driven approach to my beekeeping. I do have an engineering background, and that's what my work's about. I collect a lot of data. Over the years, I've collected weight data, temperature data, summer, winter. I've delved now into CO2 and oxygen data in my hives to understand the metabolic rates and what actually goes on in the wintering colony versus just temperature, and how everything balances out.

I could go on with all those projects that I do, but I'd say, in a good nutshell, it's that. I don't keep a lot of colonies, anywhere from 4 to 12 colonies. I have decent wintering. I do dissect every failure that I do get to get down to a root cause, to try to understand what really caused it. Is it a nutrition, a disease, a wintering setup type thing? Then, from that, I adjust my beekeeping methods.

Jeff: When you say dissect, you mean the colony, not every individual bee?

Etienne: Not every individual bee, but I've dissected probably a good 100 to 200 bees in the last two, three years, doing nutritional type reviews and analysis. [laughs]

Jeff: Very good. That ties in with your work that you've been doing with the North American Honey Bee Expo, and you're doing some microscopy. I can't say the word.

Becky: Microscopy.

Jeff: Yes, that. You've been doing those workshops.

Etienne: Last year, I ran a workshop, and this year, we're going to run another workshop, or I guess in the new year, and then I'll be also running a bit more advanced workshop about how people can actually dig a bit deeper to find the true root causes of why colonies fail and where their bees may be struggling.

Jeff: Very cool.

Becky: It's really interesting because microscopes have just become a little bit more affordable in the last decade or so, or more. It's something that beekeepers really can incorporate into their practice if they want to get a closer look.

Jeff: I'm sorry, we're way off temperature topic here, but what is a workable, usable microscope cost that would work for a beekeeper?

Etienne: I'd say it's a couple of hundred dollars for something where you can just squish a bee, look on a slide, and then see the bee content. If you're a bit more geeky like me, you might spend a couple more hundred dollars to get a nice digital camera attached to one of the eyes of the microscope so you can actually start recording and sharing, and comparing your observation over time. I'd say that's the power of a microscope for me is you can diagnose today via a single squeeze or a simple dissect of a bee, or you can look at it over time and do comparisons every month, season to season, learn about pollens and the different things the bees bring into the colony and eat. I guess that'll lead to our next topic. [laughter] You can tell a lot.

Jeff: Back to the BL post that you did, can you go back and reflect on that?

Etienne: Let's see, let's go back. It was October. We had a warmer-than-usual October. I've been traveling a lot with work this year. I did some world traveling. Just to go back a bit. Preparing bees for winter for me actually starts in spring, starts in April, starts in May. There's things that I do to build up the population, get them healthy. There's a bit of feeding and pollen feeding early in the season to build up a really nice population so that they're peaking at the right time, so they can actually build up good reserves during June into early July. Then the population peaks right when I need it. Then the winter bees start getting formed in August here, and then I tend to push them till early September.

This year, because of all my travel, it was a really crappy season. [laughter] My bees were really slow ramping out of winter because I was gone during that peak springtime. I came back pretty much late May, early June. I was behind by about a month and a half, so the bees never really ramped up. Come September, the weather was still warmish. Warmish is, yes, we're still getting negative temperatures in the-- when I say negative Celsius, just around frost temperatures in the evenings, early mornings, but the days would still go up to, say, 70 degrees Fahrenheit, so 20 degrees Celsius. We do get quite the swing.

There's not much natural forage out there, so I tend to feed some pollen patties and some syrup. Eventually, they stop taking the syrup, and I can use fondant, and they'll keep taking fondant. Usually, I'm done by the first week of September. This year, I dragged on a bit longer, and then I stopped mid to late September. Then I came back from a business trip, and it was still warm. I said, "Huh, I'll go in and put another, say, five pounds of fondant so they don't consume their stores, the precious stores that they don't have this year." I wanted to make sure that they don't consume that right now, because it is warmer.

Then I threw on another five pounds of fondant on three of the four colonies. They all have temperature sensors. One of them has a massive amount of sensors. That's my main colony that I'll be monitoring this winter. Each one does have a key sensor just above the brood nest or the center of the colony. Three of the four, you could see the temperature spiked up. After I put the fondant within hours, two of them scaled back down. The one that is actually the strongest, the one that you could see the temperature actually spiked above 90 degrees F, so around 35 Celsius, just below 35 Celsius.

I have 15 sensors in that one, so I could tell what the profile is, temperature above and below the cluster. I could see that they brought the temperature up above. If you can extrapolate, you could tell that the colony was now in a brood-rearing mode. The humidity, instead of fluctuating up and down, it tends to flatten out at that 60%, 70% RH. It tells me that they're now modulating, controlling that moisture. They're maintaining the temperature above the brood nest temperature. They did that for about eight to nine days. If you know your bee math, bee math says the cell will be uncapped for at least eight days, and then the nurse bees will cap it.

In a continuous nest, my gut feel, just looking at the data, she laid eggs for about three days, and then you can tell that by the humidity, it's nice and flat, the temperature's high. Then, after that period, the humidity started fluctuating again, and then the temperature started coming down. It told me that they've now capped the cells. Young larvae is more sensitive to cold temperatures, so they were still maintaining higher temperatures. Then after a few days, the temperature starts dwindling down. Then at about 21 days, it starts flattening out again, around, say, 40F, 45F, so maybe 10, 15 degrees Celsius, it would flatten out.

That's the temperature above the nest, so the bees can still cluster and hold warmer temperatures down in the nest, but you could actually see if you measure the days when I fed it.

I guess the other thing, I have a CO2 sensor in there. The neat thing is, the CO2 sensor, because they are regulating that environment, it's spiked to max value of my sensor, which is above 10,000 ppm, so 1%. You can see that they're now maintaining high CO2, which, if you know what CO2 is, it's metabolic gases, so it fit perfectly. Within an hour, the CO2 was a closed environment because they're now maintaining all that temperature.

Then 22 days later, CO2 dropped back down to about 4,000 or 5,000, which is the normal when there are no brood in there, and then it just starts fluctuating. Then it told me that they broke the nest cluster, I guess, I'm calling, where they were maintaining the nest environment, and now they've broke it, and now they're venting, and they're much looser. It was just neat in the way. I'd seen that in the past, but I'd never had so many sensors in the colony during those events. This time, I had the full event monitored with a bunch of sensors, plus the CO2, and then it just told me, "Interesting."

The risk is, if you have a really healthy colony and you do throw a feed in there, just fondant, and there's enough pollen reserves in that colony, there's a good chance, because I've seen it. I don't have that many colonies, so 25% in this case. There's a good chance that that colony may brood rear. If you're not insulated like me, then you run the risk of, if it does get cold, now your colony is compromised in the sense that they won't be able to maintain the nest, and then that's all lost. Energy resources, so pollen resources, protein, carbohydrate-type sugars lost.

From a energy consumption perspective, most of the energy in a brooding company or colony is actually heating energy. It's them maintaining the temperature. That's the reason why your consumption in early spring spikes up maybe four or five times consumption rate. You go from maybe a pound or two a week to sometimes four to eight pounds a week, depending on the temperature outside. Most of that extra consumption has to do with heating the nest. For myself, there's very little difference. Like I was mentioning to you in the pre-talk, right now it's close to -50 at home. I do have a sensor in there, and I can check it from here.

It's not warm, but it's above I guess freezing temperatures, about 40 degrees in there, just above the cluster. I can't monitor my lower temperatures, but they're surviving with a temperature difference of probably 60, 70 degrees with outside temperature. You can see that the bees are really resilient, but in a normal wooden colony with not too much wrapping, that colony would actually be in trouble. Hence, the reason I put that post up is to say, if you feed-- because I had stopped feeding, there'd been about three weeks without feed, and then it was still warm, and I added feed, and then it re-triggered brood rearing.

I do that intentionally late March, early April. If I do get a cleanse, I will add some pollen patties to trigger brood rearing in the middle of winter because there's still about a month to a month and a half before first pollen. I do that on purpose, but I know that my colony is actually protected and the bees will be okay.

Becky: It's basically really lovely detailed information of what we-- we're very curious about what's going on, because when you get your bees ready for winter, you have a situation where they're going to have more food early on, and we also know early on, they're going to use less of those resources because they've shut down brood production. It's telling those beekeepers that you have to sit tight because the first month or two you're in winter, they're just not using a lot of food, and they're probably fine, but when they start rearing brood, that's when it's better to take the chance if you do need to feed on emergency basis. Is that fair? Because our base will start raising brood end of January, February.

Etienne: I guess the one comment I have is, you hear about a lot of beekeepers taking peaks during the winter. Maybe once a month, they go have a peak and then they'll add some dry sugar on top and some different things, and then they ask me questions about that sugar. That's a whole different conversation because it is hard for the bees to consume, especially in winter, but I don't think raw sugar, that type of sugar, will trigger brood rearing, but some of these fondants, sometimes they have essential oils, and they have additives.

I'd say, this would be probably a nice experiment to do, is to do fondant that is just straight fondant, that's inverted sugars, versus a fondant with maybe some type of additive or some of the ones with additives and essential oils, to see does that impact the reaction of the bees? There's still a lot of questions I have, but I guess it always starts with a question.

Becky: Do you think that if you winter your colonies and give them the emergency feed upfront, they might just consume that and raise brood with it and then defeat the purpose of the emergency feed?

Etienne: Yes, I'd say more on the fondant front. On the dry sugar, they might take it, and I don't really think-- because the amount of energy to add moisture to it to digest dry sugar is different than a moist or one of those more syrupy fondants. I'd say, I typically add about, like I said, four or five pounds. I do have a little feeder slot in my insulated top that there's still R40 above where the feeder slot is, but I'll fill it with fondant before I wrap them, and it's to compensate for maybe a warm fall. Usually, the ones that still have fondant in the spring were the weaker ones going into winter.

The stronger colonies tend to consume because they have more resources, probably from a-- they can afford more brood rearing than a smaller colony, because I've seen this before, is my really strong colonies, if I do it, they'll maintain warmer temperatures longer before they go into winter mode.

Becky: I think we need to ask also, are you wintering in single deeps or two deeps or one and a half deeps?

Etienne: Usually, I do singles. I've done doubles. I've done singles and a half with a medium on top. This year, I just went back to singles, and I have two colonies that have actually five frames. I have follow boards. I've wintered five-frame nucs or six-frame nucs up here. My biggest colony has eight frames, because you remembered I said I had a really bad season. One of the pieces of advice I tell people from everywhere is, if you've got frames, they're not drawn out, take them out, replace them either with wood follow boards or foam follow boards with some protection so the bees won't chew.

Really, it's the whole relationship about reducing volume to the number of bees. You want a good number of bees per volume because my consumption is so low up here. A healthy single that fills out 10 frames of bees going in will consume maybe 30 pounds, 35 pounds of honey in six, seven months. The advantage of that, because they're hive-bound for that whole winter period, moisture is an issue, or condensation, so I need to manage how much moisture is generated. The more they would consume, the more I'd have to, I guess, manage moisture because our ground here freezes 10 to 12 feet, and it stays frozen a long time.

I tend to have ice buildup below the colonies, so I need to give space underneath for the moisture or the condensation to flow out of the colony, because I have tried solid bottom boards and all of that, but I keep getting ice in the bottom. I just go open-screen bottom board, and I use a slatted rack to give the bees an extra protection underneath. It gives enough space for the dead bees to fall out and the condensation to drain out the open screen bottom board. It's all in a insulated cavity. It's not like there's direct wind or -50 temperature down there.

Becky: Does your hive stand have dead air space?

Etienne: Dead air space, exactly. It's like a crawl space underneath the stand. Now we've had, I don't know, a couple of feet of snow. It's all surrounded with snow now.

Jeff: Just take this quick break. Think about what Etienne has told us.

Becky: No.

[laughter]

Jeff: We'll be right back after these words from our sponsors.

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Becky: Welcome back, everybody. Etienne, it's absolutely riveting. I want to back up because we do have listeners all across the country with very, very different winters. Although I want to talk about a really, really cold winter for the rest of our time, I want to make sure that we apply some of what you've shared just as far as feeding, because I know our friends in Texas and Southern states are able to feed, really, year-round, much more easily. They have those windows.

Could you comment on what beekeepers should do, how they should evaluate their climate, and then plan for feeding? Because it's different depending upon what your climate is, and it's also different depending upon what your weather is like, but the principles are there as far as disturbing the colony and the impact of feeding on the bees.

Etienne: I'd say one of the key concepts to understand is your locations. We'll call it the annual bee cycle. The annual bee cycle is when is your first pollen, when is your last pollen, and a lot of time, that last pollen is either-- Then there's dearth periods within the season if you are in a really hot place and they have a dry hot season. I was going to say, you want your first pollen, last pollen. Last pollen, a lot of times it's associated with a killing frost or an environmental change. There's a pattern change. Plus-minus a few weeks around that last pollen, is your bees actually need a dearth or a dwindling amount of pollen coming in for them to create winter bees.

Literally, just in simple terms, a winter bee is a bee that hasn't become a nurse bee yet. She's like a nurse bee in waiting because once they start taking care of bees, that's a summer bee, they will not be long-lived. The food is dwindling, and then probably there's pheromones. There's things going on in the colony that the bees will start absorbing more fat bodies, vitellogenin, and some of these chemicals, so that they have special reserves on their body that they can convert come spring and raise that first generation of bees. The reason I put that in context is feeding needs to fit around that. They need pollen.

If you're end of season, there's a long period without pollen, and then winter hits, your winter bees will be really old, come out the back end. Some areas, they might be dry climate, it might be something, so they don't have a good fall pollen flow, like me. I have to feed pollen until early September, and then I stop. My last natural pollen is technically early August. There's not much natural pollen. There's some clovers, a few little things, but clovers aren't native up here, and there's really small patches. I supplement with pollen patties, about, I think it's a 15% version of real pollen patties, into early September.

What that does is it guarantees the queen will keep playing 'till that point, and then she dwindles, she slows. Then I create a dearth, so that they create a nice generation of winter bees that are not too old. They're 30 to 40 days younger than if I didn't do that. While I'm doing that, I usually start with light syrup. Usually, after I pull my honey supers in late July, I'm going to start light feeding one-to-one syrup because there's still a lot of time just to get the bees used to sugar syrup. I don't want to put too much because I actually want to see how quickly they're taking the syrup in. Eventually, the bees just start drinking the stuff down.

At that point, when I start seeing the consumption rate is high, then I go to two-to-one just to reduce the amount of moisture in the syrup. I tend to do that usually by the second week of August. They start really guzzling it down. Luckily, the colony itself is already close to 100 pounds. Even a single up here, it'll be around the 75-pound range. The syrup is really more to backfill the nest, because despite me doing pollen patties, you can actually see the nest starting to shrink. I do use open-screen. I have screen bottom boards, and I have the debris tray in there.

You can actually use the debris tray to monitor the size of the nest by the droppings, because the cappings, as the bees are hatching, you see the dark cappings, you see the light wax colors if they're growing the nest in the spring. In the fall, you can actually do the opposite, and you can see the dark cappings. You can actually, without opening up the hive, have a good idea of how big the nest is. What the bees are using the syrup for is they're starting to backfill the nest. They're filling all these cells up. By early September, for myself, and again, early September for most, is fall. There's still some goldenrod, and the clovers are still blooming in some places.

The key is you pull your honey super, don't wait too long. I'd say if you're always adding candy board and sugar in your colonies, my gut feel is you don't have a good feeding strategy. You're compensating. I'd say you could do that as emergency if you have to. If you feel like you have to for your bees, then I guess that's the challenge. It's finding that equation. For those who don't insulate, my recommendation is use a wind wrap.

They keep saying tar paper. It's black, it absorbs radiation from the sun, and all that stuff. It's all great, but for me, the important thing with that is it's a wind block, and it reduces the rate of cooling. Rate of cooling is wind chill, because as the wind blows by your colony, it's accelerating the cooling of that colony. What the tar paper does, it actually creates a nice insulating shell. For most folks, I say by doubling your insulation, from going, say, a standard wood box, adding a decent wrapping will add almost like a bubble foil, will add another one R. That will halve, it's going to cut your heat loss in half.

Every time you double insulation, you cut the heat loss in the next half, in half. Eventually, you reach a point where there's just no return. Hence, the reason for most, R5 is plenty. I have on the sidewalls, no more than maybe 8 or 9, maybe 10, in typical winter. At some point, the payback is just not there. The reason I bring up the insulation and the heat loss is the reason a lot of you have to go triples, or have to put a bunch of mediums on top, which for me, I'm flabbergasted when people talk about adding all that honey, because I went through a five-frame nuc with 10 pounds of honey for six months, six, seven months, but that nuc is wedged between two colonies.

There's R40 on top. That one there, I will put bottom insulation. It's a very insulated colony. Folks need to understand that the amount of feeding you do is a function of how much they consume. Because in spring, the only reason I feed in spring light syrup is not because I don't have honey in the boxes, because I have 30, 40 pounds left coming out of winter. I rarely feed because the bees need it. The reason I do it is, one, they're thirsty. It's to help with their cleansing, and light syrup has been shown to encourage brooding because the air is dry, and the whole moisture dynamic is changing in the spring.

For me, the spring feeding strategy is not about bulking up or ensuring that they don't starve. For me, it's about stimulating the queen and getting them in balance again. It's a light syrup. The challenge with light syrups is they tend to ferment a lot quicker, so then the volume is important. Don't put too many. That's why I like those baggy-type, Ziploc-type feeder or a small top feeder, something that is not too big, and it's just to stimulate them to start rearing, because like I said, typically, I'll have six, seven, maybe eight heavy frames of honey going into winter, and I at least have four to five untouched frames in seven months later.

That's what I mean. The folks need to realize my conditions are different. I think -50 is too cold, but my average temperature is about -15 Celsius. I can't calculate the difference in Fahrenheit in my head, but for me, at that temperature, that colony is at a sweet spot, so the exposure temperature, for the folks who read up about wintering indoors, in the prairies here, it's 4 degrees Celsius. 45 F, 50 F is the ideal temperature, if you look at the metabolic curve that circulates. That's the temperature at which the bees will consume the less honey.

For most of my winter, the bees are at that resting metabolism spot where just the waste heat coming off of the body is enough to keep, one, the box warm. It's enough to recharge the honey frames. Because the things people forget is honey, yes, it helps insulate, but it's a battery, it's a thermal battery that sucks in heat and releases heat depending on the outside temperature. In my context, the reason I want insulation is so the heat release is a lot slower. The honey will absorb a lot more heat than if it's vented out the top. I've done a lot of thinking about how heat, temperature, now CO2, oxygen, moisture, all the dynamics, and all the relationships between all of those, just to see the why.

To context, it applies to the cold places in Canada. I'd say, in Minnesota, it would apply because I did start keeping bees just north of there, and it gets pretty cold. Again, the challenge is because there's different types of beekeepers. There's beginners or small-time beekeepers like myself, who, to spend an extra $100 per hive kit to get the poly hive is worth it. If you're a commercial beekeeper and you have 1,000 colonies or 500 colonies, it's a different equation. This is where there's always a caveat. Like you said, regional, are you a big beekeeper, lots of bees, not lots of bees. What scale? I'd say it's finding a model that works for you.

Then there's an equation. How much your inputs are in the fall, and if you can get more than 75%, 80% of your colonies over winter, the way you do it now, it's-- I hate talking about economics, but really, to me, if you're buying new bees every year just to replenish your stock, at some point, you need to understand, I guess, what's causing you not to succeed. I'd say the feeding strategy is part of it. I do see, again, a lot of these Vivaldi boards and these top trays with a lot of dry sugar. I tested that with wood chips and all that type of stuff. Then I've quickly realized, once you start doing the math and you start doing observations, that it actually does nothing in my situation.

If you do have any bit of insulation, if you top-insulate, and if you feed properly in the fall, late summer, there's really no reasons to worry about having those things.

Becky: There's something interesting going on right now. Not that it's totally new to beekeeping, but there are a lot of different ways to winter a colony. Even though early on in the 1900s, a lot of beekeepers wanted to do less and see if they could get good survival in really cold climates. They found that, yes, that light wrap actually works well with an upper entrance. A lot of that work was done with a moisture board or some way to wick away the moisture. One of the most recent, we've got the condensing hives on one hand, but then we also have recent information still with that ventilated entrance that actually looked at colonies in Illinois.

It's not that cold in Illinois compared to what we're talking about, but they showed really good survival and conservation of resources with that foam board on top, adding R7, 7.5 on top. I'm concerned that beekeepers now have this information and they're mixing and matching wintering strategies. For example, one of our concerns is if you use that upper insulation, should you still use some kind of a moisture board, or could that actually work against you and create a moisture issue one way or another?

Etienne: You bring up a good point. If you have great wintering success, if you want to experiment different styles, rock and roll, but if you have success and it works, stick with it until it stops working. On the insulation, when I started beekeeping in the Yukon, I was consuming a lot of Southern ideas. [laughter] I noticed there was this tray with wood chips and a center slot where you could put sugar. What I did was I built that slot with the wood chips. I had my typical maybe R20 on top insulation. Then I quickly noticed over winter, underneath it was dry, but above the wood chips, it was wet and frozen.

Then what that tells me is the heat flows through the wood chips. It is much colder where I'm at, but then there is a-- imagine your attic again. Many attics, the roof of the house is not insulated, but the ceiling is insulated, and then there's a space above the insulated ceiling for the moist air to just flow out. It's like the traditional style of doing a roof. A lot of the roofs now, if you insulate the top, it removes the-- because I'd say the reason people put wicking in there is to prevent-- they're worried about condensation falling on top of the bees. If you put insulation above the colony, the condensation point will now move to the sides.

If you put wicking in there, wicking material, the heat will flow through, but you'll get a cold, I guess, interface between your insulation and that wicking material in that middle layer. It'll be cold there, and that's where the condensation point or the dew point will be. Then if it's, I guess, always borderline dew point in there, you'll get a buildup of moisture. Then there is the risk of it flowing back down through the wicking material because you've actually created a condensation point, a dew point, above your colony. If you're just using insulation, then the dew point moves to the side because it creates a heat dome, and heat rises, and then it cools, and then it'll start dropping on the sides.

I'd say, by adding the wick up there-- This is why I'm not against top entrances. I'm against unlimited top entrances, meaning shims and all these open areas on top, and then people have really big lower entrances. What I try to get people to understand is there's a relationship between the size of your bottom entrance and your top entrance. The bigger your top entrance, the smaller you want your lower entrance to be because there's a throttling effect there. The bigger your lower entrance, that's what I tell folks, that if you want to try no-top entrance, you need a bigger lower entrance to make sure that there's enough space in convective area for the air to flow in and flow out.

Becky: When you say bigger, do you mean using an entrance reducer on the bigger opening, but still having an entrance reducer, or removing that entrance reducer?

Etienne: Bigger than the biggest, say, maybe 4 inches. 4 inches by a 1/2 inch. At that point, people need to make sure that they have to protect against mice. The key with that is you need to make sure you're well sealed above. I call it micro leaks. Some people don't have top entrances, but the joints and everything is so leaky, that it's equivalent to a top entrance.

Becky: If you do use this upper insulation and then upper moisture board but still have an upper entrance, is that minimizing that negative impact where you're going to have that layer above the wicking board? I know that I'm asking you really specific information at the end.

[laughter]

Etienne: No problem.

Becky: You've got the sensors and the experience.

Etienne: What happens there is now your wicking material is actually no longer wicking, so then why have the wick in the first place? Your top vent is actually where the moisture will flow out because there'll be a flow-through. Maybe on the far side of where the top entrance is, you might have some wicking in there, but then if you go top entrance, I'd say there's probably no point doing any wick at all because the point of the top entrance is to vent out that moisture or air. If you put your top installation closer to where the bees are, you'll see that they may go right up front to the south wall, and plug that entrance with their bodies, and create a heat dome there.

In some cases, they'll move back to the north wall, leave it open, and then there'll be a flow-through air at the front there. I'd say the bees are incredible at managing their microclimates.

Becky: Despite what we do. [laughs]

Etienne: Exactly.

Becky: Etienne, when is your wintering honeybee book coming out?

Etienne: With all these AI tools now, it's much easier to put all my articles and all my information in one area now to help me draft and put some ideas together, so I'd say in a couple of years.

Becky: A couple of years.

Etienne: Yes, a couple of years.

Becky: We are excited.

Jeff: That does lead up to a good question. If anybody wants to learn more about your wintering techniques and what you're doing, where can they find out more?

Etienne: There's a couple. I have a Facebook group called North of 60, and I created one, it's called Microscopy Lab and Citizen Science type thing. That one there is for geeky microscopy and sensor-type stuff. Also on Facebook. I do have a YouTube channel that I try to put videos out, but I'd say email me at yukonhoneybees@gmail.com is probably the best way. I do have a website, but I'm negligent in keeping it up to date.

[laughter]

Jeff: Well, we will have all of that information in the show notes. Both the Facebook pages, your YouTube channel, and your email will be in your guest profile, so our listeners can get ahold of you if they want to. Also, this will be airing probably after the North American Honey Bee Expo, but they can definitely-- We'll have been talking to you there. This is really fascinating. We didn't even get to talk about the technology and how you do all of that, so we'll have to have you back, and you and I can just talk tech for a little bit and--

Becky: I'll shut up. [laughter] Oh, we're still being recorded.

[laughter]

Jeff: No, it'll be a fun conversation. Etienne, you bring a perspective to it that most beekeepers don't have to deal with, so I'm really fascinated by that here. Today, it's 10 degrees Celsius, 50 degrees, but our humidity level, things are floating away. It's just a same problem, but different problem in terms of how the bees handle the wooden boxes we put them in or the plastic boxes, or whatever your box is that you're putting your bees in. It's really fascinating, and I'm sure beekeepers will be discussing the pros and cons of all of this for long after we're gone in our own boxes somewhere.

Etienne: Absolutely. I guess, I'm always willing to be right. Sorry, willing to be wrong. [laughter] That was a slip.

Jeff: A little Freudian slip there, but that's all right.

Etienne: Debate, challenging the status quo, all that type of stuff, it's great, but I want people to try to logic it out, understand bee biology, bee behaviors, standard physics. We all live in the same world, and we follow the same rules, and I think there's a lot yet to learn on bees.

Jeff: That's fantastic.

Becky: Well said.

Jeff: I appreciate you bringing it to our listeners and looking forward to having you back. Thanks, Etienne.

Becky: We trust your voice. Thank you so much for sharing it with us.

Etienne: My pleasure.

Jeff: Not even talking about the topic. Speaking of northern Yukon, I was cold the entire interview, yes.

Becky: Oh. [laughs]

Jeff: I was just freezing. No, that was good. Etienne is just a wealth of great data.

Becky: He's got such a pulse on the population, nutritional needs, and he's doing it in such an extreme climate. You have to be a good beekeeper to keep bees in an extreme climate.

Jeff: In extreme climate, there's little room next to no room for air. You really have to be on top of bee biology. You really have to understand the dynamics in that colony and what's going on. He has the sensors and the hives set up to be able to do that, and I think that's fascinating, of course.

Becky: What he is bringing to all of us, no matter where we keep bees, is just this intense understanding of those dynamics.

Jeff: Looking forward to having him back.

Becky: Agree.

Jeff: That about wraps it up for this episode of Beekeeping Today. Before we go, be sure to follow us and leave us a five-star rating on Apple Podcast or wherever you stream the show. Even better, write a quick review to help other beekeepers discover what you enjoy. You can get there directly from our website by clicking on the reviews tab on the top of any page. We want to thank Betterbee, our presenting sponsor, for their ongoing support of the podcast. We also appreciate our longtime sponsors, Global Patties, Strong Microbials, and Northern Bee Books for their support in bringing you each week's episode.

Most importantly, thank you for listening and spending time with us. If you have any questions or feedback, just head over to our website and drop us a note. We'd love to hear from you. Thanks again, everybody.

[00:58:57] [END OF AUDIO]