Hive Top Insulation

After fantastic success with our new inner cover insulation last winter, we are doing it again with one small tweak.

Watch the full video here:

And for those of you who prefer to read, here are the photos and descriptions:

This is the magic layer. We lovingly call it shiny bubble wrap and you can find it in the hardware store as hot water tank wrap. This goes right on top of the frames. It insulates and reflects the heat of the cluster so that the moisture in the hive will not condense on it. When we peel these off in the spring, they are bone dry, whereas a wood inner cover would often be wet and moldy.

We use a second, slightly smaller piece to fill the space made by the rim of the inner cover. This is our tweak since last year as we found some bees could crawl above the first layer.

We cut a notch so that the bees can still use their upper entrance.

We use a medium super as an attic boxes and we fill it with a waterproofed insulation (in heat sealed plastic; you could also use a jumbo ziplock bag).

We will eventually wrap the body of the hive, but we wait until the forecast is a little cooler for that. We want the bees to cluster before we wrap, so we wait until the full forecast is below 5°C/40°F (daytime highs) and we don't worry if there are some below freezing nights while we wait for that colder forecast.