Wintering: don't squander this year's profits replacing lost bees next year. Successful wintering makes you money now, and next year

摘要

"Mite management problems are only a small, albeit very important part of the wintering puzzle." When considered together with the mess and additional work it produces, the cost of rearing or buying replacement bees, and loss of crop income, Winter loss can easily be the largest expense of the year for a beekeeper. If you never lose over 10 percent of your colonies over winter, and your surviving hives are always strong every Spring, you can skip this article. It is not for you. If you don't experience any Winter in your region, with snow, cold weather, absence of honey flows and long confinement periods for the bees, this might not interest you either. For the rest of us, improving wintering success offers the largest, and possibly easiest, opportunity for significantly increasing our profit and enjoyment from beekeeping.