Whether you live North, South, East or West, winter for all intents and purposes is here—shorter days, longer nights, cooler temperatures. It is a great time to sit back and reflect on the great job you did in this first season of being a beekeeper. Or to be concerned that you weren't as conscientious in your oversight of your honey bees as you intended to be. Whatever your state of mind at this point in time "it is what is" and for the most part you can't do anything truly heroic to change things at this late date. What you have done to help your colonies reach over-wintering requirements has prepared them to be dead, welfare bees or a successful productive honey bee colony in 2008. There are obviously things you can't control like the genetics of your bees for wintering ability, the colony being blown over in a winter storm or knocked over by a bear and the colony being out in the open and disorganized or any number of little things that when added together make a big thing. Honey bees have been around for millions of years in a temperate environment so sit back and let's talk about what you may want to do and plan for in the New Year.

Packaged and labeled honey comb.

There are a few things you really need to do. Winter is the time to care for your equipment and make plans for next year.

Having gone through this first year and all of the "firsts" you have experienced, you may have been anxious and felt overwhelmed at times. You may still feel this way on some occasions in the future. That is because with knowledge and experience comes confidence. Confidence to me, as I enter my Golden years, never comes from having all the answers, it comes from being open to all the questions, not being afraid of the questions. This goes back to my mantra. Stay calm, there will be plenty of time to panic later.

Knowledge is power

If you haven't done it already identify your state beekeepers association, your regional or local beekeepers association and go to the meetings! You will meet beekeepers. New beekeepers like yourself, old beekeepers and experienced beekeepers. Beekeepers are not bashful folks. They will greet you with open arms. Tell them you are a brand new beekeeper and ask a question and you will get more instruction and advice than you can imagine. Most of it will be correct. You will have a great time too. To give yourself a broader view you need to read the American Bee Journal and Bee Culture. These publications are devoted to beekeeping and nothing but beekeeping. New information, current events, up to date management practices based on the latest research, beekeeping around the

Foundation

world—everything you can think of. Check the catalogs from the major beekeeping equipment suppliers and if you don't already have enough beekeeping books think about purchasing The Hive and the Honey Bee, and the new ABC's & XYZ's of Beekeeping. There are basic "how to" beekeeping books, specialty books on queen rearing, honey production, beeswax, pollination, pests, predators, diseases, mead making, candle crafting, pollen collection and on and on and on. More has been written about honey bees than anything else, except religion. So, there is a lot of information to catch up on. Then there are the beekeeping videos where you can tie together the things you have heard at the bee meetings or read in the books with a visual image. Everybody learns differently so until you can get back and open up your colonies you can do everything you want vicariously.

The problem with going to the beekeepers' meetings and listening intently to the beekeepers' stories during the donut and juice break, reading everything you can get your hands on, and wanting to watch the honey bee spring management video for the fourth time with your significant other instead of anything else, is that this leads to unquenchable desire. Desire for more colonies. It is difficult not to want more colonies. Success is exciting. If you come out of the other end of winter with healthy strong colonies they

Frames

will at some time want to engage in their genetically based prerogative and asexually reproduce by dividing and swarming. Maybe once, maybe twice, but swarm they may. It makes perfect sense then to plan on a controlled swarm.

The management tool is called "dividing," making two colonies out of one. It's relatively simple to do but it requires more hardware. You have to have more boxes, more frames, foundation, tops, bottoms and so forth. But it is not really just that easy. There are many different hive hardware options. Knowing what you know now and think you want to do in the next season, this is the time to plan. For equipment do you want to use all deeps (boxes)? Or were they just too big? If you were successful this past season and used deeps as a honey super they may have weighed 60-70 pounds if full. Nothing is ergonomically correct on a beehive. Having 60-70 pounds of honey in a rectangular box that requires you to bend at the waist and use your back and not your legs with all the weight held on your finger tips is just plain hard and uncomfortable. Not to sound sexist but female beekeepers who are smaller and some guys, like me, are just not strong enough to do this too much. Having just a few colonies is doable by yourself. Having a buddy system with a friend on one side and you on the other is better. But, finding a friend to do this can be tough and unless they are really your friend they may find all of it too weird and scary. They may simply find another friend who just wants them to go to the mall. Forget you.

The decision is then do you want large boxes or smaller boxes? Instead of one deep would two mediums be better or three shallows? Do I want to mix different sizes of boxes and frames in my apiary or do I want to have universal sizes of boxes and frames. Standard bottom boards and tops and inner covers, queen excluders, and everything else will fit with these 10 frame boxes. As long as you provide the proper "volume" so the colony can grow and the queen lay and enough nectar and pollen can be converted to honey and bee bread and used and stored for later having multiple small boxes can work as well as one or two deep boxes.

Hive body

Since a healthy, populous colony of honey bees will collect nectar and store surplus honey whether you want them to or not, deciding on the foundation and type of frame to use is another decision. If you are just going to produce natural comb honey then you will need a pure beeswax foundation with no embedded wires or structural supports in it. Comb honey is probably the best, freshest, most flavorful honey available. The honey that is stored naturally in the comb behind the individual beeswax cap, constructed to seal in the honey in its single cell, is just like the bees left it. It has not been uncapped and processed to remove and collect liquid honey. It has not been exposed to the air so all the essence of the flowers that it is derived from is there. The aroma, with all the memories of warm sunny days, is there with the first bite. All the flavor of summer flowers in winter. What could be better?

Extracted honey is good and in a commercial context is a much more practical product to collect and package. To produce liquid honey a machine called an extractor is used. These machines can be small to remove honey from as few as two frames at a time or huge, taking hundreds at a time. They all work on the same principle of centrifugal force. They are spinning centrifuges. By spinning the uncapped frames in a certain way the honey comes out and is collected. Think of the spin cycle on your washing machine—same process. As you can imagine there is quite a bit of force being applied to a spinning, whirring frame of honey

Pollen trap

that may weigh as much as seven to eight pounds. Using a pure beeswax foundation with no structural support for the comb to be built on and honey stored in won't work in an extractor. The centrifugal force is greater than the strength of the heavy honey-laden comb and it will break and fly out of the frame. If you are going to try for liquid honey then you will have another decision to make.

What kind of foundation will I use?

Will I use a pure beeswax foundation that has metal wires embedded in it and running the length, top to bottom of the foundation? These wires will fit into special grooves in the top bar and bottom bar of the frame. The beekeeper can add additional wires that are attached to the frame itself and run lengthwise and are melted into the foundation with a special electrical device. All of these wires add strength to the foundation and the resulting comb filled with honey. You can also select foundation that is made of plastic that has the hexagonal cell imprint formed into it permanently. It is available in a plain plastic that the bees add their own wax to to make comb or it can be coated by you or the distributor with beeswax as an enticement and a help in having comb built on it. This fits into a standard wooden frame and is strong and can be reused for years. The comb can be scraped off when it is dark and old and the plastic foundation below is reusable forever.

Decisions to make

What are your goals and what do you just want to have fun and experiment with? Because if it isn't fun for you, you won't be a good beekeeper. You might as well just go to the mall with your other friends.

Propolis trap

Honey bees pollinate. They take pollen from one flower to another by accident and collect it as a food source for the colony. Pollen is the protein, vitamin, mineral and fat (lipid) source for developing honey bees. Without a solid nutrition base they can't feed brood (babies) and themselves and they starve, dwindle and die. Honey bees bring in more pollen, if available from flowers, than they need. Just like nectar for honey, they bring in more pollen to ferment into bee bread than they need as insurance for survival. The beekeeper can collect the surplus pollen coming in without damaging the colony. There are pollen "traps" that fit on the colony to scrape the pollen from the legs of the foragers coming in. There is an established market for pollen for those who eat it as a food supplement for themselves or for their pets and livestock.

Specially designed plastic mats/grids can be purchased which facilitate the collection of propolis. Propolis is the plant exudates, tree gums, saps and resins that honey bees collect to seal up unwanted cracks and crevices. More importantly, propolis is spread on the interior surfaces of the hive and the inside of the cells between brood cycles and egg laying as a disinfectant, anti-microbial barrier that inhibits many bacterial and fungal growths. Propolis has been proven as an effective anti-microbial in people and animals as well. There is a market for it as a tincture and it is added to toothpastes, mouth washes and topical creams. Do you want to collect this?

Do you need more equipment?

How involved do you want to be as a beekeeper? Is this a possible business or are the products of the hive just for you and relatives and friends? Whatever the decision you make, whatever the goal is, realize it doesn't just stop because you only want two colonies. It grows whether you want it to or not. Part of your job as a beekeeper is to maximize the health of your honey bees so they can maximize the products of the hive. Whether you collect them or not they are being collected and brought in.

In our culture this winter season brings with it the wonderful reflective and rejuvenating season of Christmas. A time when we can further assess what our actions have meant to ourselves and those we touch with our lives. These are gifts that we give and receive. Well, for good or otherwise this season has morphed into a time of year where we give other gifts. Since it is going to happen anyway, you might as well make a list of beekeeping stuff you need (want).

I'll share my list with you:

Top and bottom

• Subscription to the American Bee Journal and Bee Culture
• A book like Beekeeper's Handbook
• New 4 x 7 stainless smoker
• 2 hive bodies (deep)
• 20 sheets foundation
• Bottom board, and top
• Pollen trap
• Propolis trap

Will I get all this? Not from one person, but if I selectively make my wishes known that I don't want more aftershave or cologne, a Hawaiian shirt, socks or an assortment of cheese, I'll bet I get pretty close. If I have shared my honey with those beforehand with the implicit promise that they will get more, I'm there!