A beekeeper explains how to compress colonies for winter by removing supers and pushing bees into the brood box. Do it early on a warm day so summer bees, which live only 4 to 6 weeks, can return before they die. Bearding, when bees cluster on the hive front, signals the process is working.
At this time of the year, you need to compress your colonies of bees down for winter. You're pushing them all down into the brood box, taking away all of the supers. And when you do that, and I do recommend around this time of year, do it early rather than later, but you're likely to see significant bearding like this. I always say to people, put that smoker down, we don't need them for calm Buckfast queens from Black Mountain Honey. I always say to people though, do this compression on a really nice warm sunny day. Bee just landing on my nose there as well. If you do it on a nice warm sunny day, what it means is that all of these bees outside the front have a little bit of time to go in. Loads of the bees here, they're summer bees, they're due to die soon. They only live between 4 to 6 weeks. The brood nest is contracting, the bees are shutting down. A lot of these bees are going to be dead in a few weeks. You can compress them down, do it on a nice day, let them build like this, and within a few days they'll all be inside the individual brood box ready for winter.
