I may not wrap all of my hives this year, but I’ve decided to wrap at least the ones that don’t get much sunshine.

The black wrap will perhaps warm them up a degree or two on really cold (but sunny) days so they can move more easily onto honey frames.

My feelings about wrapping my hives continues to evolve. I began in 2010 by wrapping my hives in roofing felt just like this, except now I use thumb tacks instead of staples because they’re easy to push into the hive and don’t disturb the bees like the bang of a staple gun. (Both this and using push pins to attach shrew-proofing mesh was recommended to me by one of the 6 regular readers of Mud Songs. You know who you are. Thanks.) Over the years, though, mostly due to laziness and the fact that my beehives were an inconvenient distance from where I lived, I got out of the habit of wrapping them and it didn’t seem to make any difference to my over-winter survival rates. Generally, colonies that went into winter in good shape, came out in good shape whether they were wrapped or not.

But last winter, not having wrapped any of my hives, I wasn’t too impressed with how they came out of the winter. None of them died, but neither where they strong. Having hives mostly full of old and stressed queens may explain some of it, but I also noticed in hindsight most of my hives get very little direct sunlight in the winter, much less sunlight than any of my hives in the past. So just to be safe, I’m wrapping the hives that get the least of amount of sunlight. We’ll see what happens.

NOVEMBER 07, 2016: Attaching the hive wrap with push pins works too:

I’m not sure which I prefer at the moment, thumb tacks or push pins (I’m leaning towards thumb tacks because they’re easier to attach), but they both work.

I switched to thumb tacks and pushpins because a staple gun bangs so hard into the hive, the bees are never happy about it. But even cutting the wrap around the entrances was enough to get these bees riled up:

I’m not planning to wrap all of my hives. If my unwrapped colonies get through the winter in good shape, I may never wrap again. I’d be more than happy to do without it.

DECEMBER 01, 2016: After comparing the hives that were wrapped and installed with thumb tacks to the ones that were installed with pushpins, my conclusion is that thumb tacks are better. They’re easier to tack onto the hive (the pushpins often require some hard twisting), and because they can tack on quicker during the wrapping process, it’s easier to keep the wrap tight when the tack is going in, which results is a tighter wrap around the hive. So let’s give it up for thumb tacks and the scintillating world of beekeeping! {A smattering of applause.} The only drawback is that thumb tacks are probably more difficult to remove in the spring. You’d probably have to stick your fingernail or a hive tool underneath them to pry them off. But here’s my simple solution to that:

Ta-da! That’s the clincher for me. I’m going with thumb tacks for now on. It’s time to stock up thumb tacks!

December 2018 Postscript: Using thumb tacks and pushpins may be cheaper and less disruptive than using a staple gun, but that doesn’t make it the better choice. All the options for attaching mesh and black hive wrap are usually a matter of personal preference, like pretty much everything in beekeeping. Some people tie down their hives with ratchet straps. I put heavy rocks on top of my hives (though most of the time I don’t use anything).

Many new beekeepers in Newfoundland buy their hives from Gerard Smith, hives that incorporate most of the features of the D.E. Hive — and they’re excellent. But they also increase the start-up costs for new beekeepers who, out of financial necessity, might go with a traditional Langstroth hive and slightly more affordable hive components instead. And that’s cool too.

Some people make hard candy or candy boards as emergency winter feed. Others might use fondant or no-cook sugar cakes instead. Some people use hive top feeders for syrup feeding, while others might use frame feeders. Some people might extract their honey, while others might crush and strain raw comb on their kitchen table. They’re all variations on a theme, they all work and they all have their pros and cons.

Yup, there is such a thing as bad beekeeping, and I know it’s bad when my bees don’t survive the winter, but everything else outside of bad inattentive beekeeping usually comes down to personal preference. Those preferences might be motivated by financial costs or by convenience or by whatever is thought to be best for the bees, or all of the above. It doesn’t matter that much. The same methods often produce different results between beekeepers because there are about a billion variables that come into play with everything in beekeeping.

But generally speaking, most methods that I’ve tried come pretty close to the mark. The key is to just pick something, go with it and see what happens. That’s the history of every successful beekeeper on the planet. I’m rambling on like this because many new beekeepers I speak to want to know exactly what they should do. But there’s nothing exact about it. To me, beekeeping is always a work in progress.