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Simple Quilt Boxes for Toasty and Happy Bees

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One of the things I’ve learned in my first year of beekeeping is that if you ask 10 beekeepers a question you’ll get 14 answers. Everyone has an opinion and they’re usually different. Each beekeeper will take a hybrid of answers, do a lot of research and reading and then come to their individual conclusion.

Using a quilt box on a beehive was something I read about a few months ago on Tillys Nest. Bees cluster together in the winter in center of the hive to keep warm. They can handle a cooler day, but moisture and damp will kill the hive.

A quilt box goes on top of the hive boxes and under the inner and out cover. Its sole purpose is to provide a way to absorb moisture in the hive during colder months.

I took a shallow super (the smallest one in height at just under six inches) and then bought some No. 8 hardware cloth. No. 8 hardware cloth is made of metal and has squares every eighth of an inch so it’s so small that the bees can’t pass through it.

Essential tools – staple gun, wire snips and GLOVES! No. 8 Hardware cloth bites. 🙁

I cut the cloth to fit the shallow hive and then stapled it inside about two inches above the bottom of the super. Then I drilled 7/8″ holes around the sides and back of the super and put hardware cloth over those on the inside to keep bees from coming IN the box and getting stuck and starving.

And then, since my Mom is a quilter, I decided to paint them in Amish colors to look like a quilt.

At the same time, I made sugar bricks for each hive. There was some debate in my head on whether or not to make them at all.

My hive has two deep boxes which are each a little more than 9.5 inches in height. The bottom deep is the brood chamber where the bees have their eggs and larvae and the top deep is for honey.

I followed conventional wisdom and took no honey this year so they could overwinter and the top deep is absolutely chock full of honey. I bet it weighs better than 5o pounds, which is exactly what you want going into winter.

Still, a little insurance so the girls don’t starve isn’t a bad thing, so I found a sugar cake recipe from Home Sweet Bees. I didn’t realize how fragile these cakes are so unfortunately they cracked but I don’t think the bees will mind too much. The yellow jackets were already on them when I had them ready to install, and I confess I left a little lump of sugar for them on the top of one hive.

The sugar cakes go directly on a piece of newspaper on the top of the frames in the center box. I decided to use a piece of the comics to give the bees some winter reading (yuk yuk yuk). The sugar cake has to be on the center of the frames because bees move up through the hive during winter. There have been reports of bees starving to death because they couldn’t find the food that was in their hive over the winter.

Sugar Cake on top of the frames in the hive

The sugar cakes go directly on a piece of newspaper on the top of the frames in the center box. I decided to use a piece of the comics to give the bees some winter reading (yuk yuk yuk). The sugar cake has to be on the center of the frames because bees move up through the hive during winter. There have been reports of bees starving to death because they couldn’t find the food that was in their hive over the winter.

The slender piece painted purple with the hole in it is an upper entrance for the bees and it also gives room around the sugar cake so the quilt box can sit on top.

You can see (since I put this upper entrance on a couple weeks ago) that they’ve already put propolis in the cracks to keep the wind out.

Inside the quilt box I put four inches of wood shavings to absorb the moisture as the temperature drops outside and moisture condenses on the inside of the hive. It will rise through the hardware cloth into the shavings, which will absorb the water. Then it can evaporate out the small holes cut in the sides and back of the quilt box.

Bonus is I can move shavings aside from the quilt box and check the bees and their sugar cake during my visits out there without compromising the hive and the warmth they’ve created.

When it’s time for another sugar cake, I can just add it right on top, and the next one I add will probably have some pollen in the middle for extra protein.

While beekeeping is really one great big experiment, I am pretty happy with how this turned out. It might be overkill for the temperatures we get in Georgia but I figured it sure can’t hurt.

A good day in the bee yard, and they’re all ready for Winter.

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