Laurence Edwards secures every bee colony year-round with a ratchet strap (about £3 for 5 meters) threaded through the hive and stand. This prevents the hive body from separating if knocked over by wind, animals, or snow, keeping the colony sealed and protected. Works best with splayed-leg stands that lower the center of gravity.
In this video, I'm going to talk to you about strapping down your hives for winter and why I strap my hives down all the way throughout the year. So regardless of whether my colonies are on poly, whether they're nucs, whether they're made of wood, flat roofs, gable roofs, or whatever, every single colony that I own has a ratchet strap. Now, ratchet straps used to be super, super cheap. I used to get them from a company called Handy Straps, and they were about a pound each. You can buy them now from eBay. They're about £3 each, so they're still really, really cheap. And I like the ones that don't have the hooks on it. They're called an endless ratchet strap. I buy a 5-meter version and I make sure that it has at least kind of 800 kilograms of tension capacity. Now, I think it's really important that everybody should ratchet down their beehive over winter. Reason being is that in winter there's loads of risks to your colony. So the wind blowing it over, or maybe an animal coming along and knocking it over. And because you're not doing your regular inspections, you might not notice it for a couple of weeks. Also, because it's so cold at that point in the year, even if they're knocked over for 24 hours, the rain gets in, the snow gets in, the cold gets in, the colony will perish. And that's obviously not what you want for your bees. So ratcheting down your colonies like this means that if they do get blown over, or if an animal comes and knocks them over, the whole of the body is The bees will propolise the seals down in the winter. If it falls off the hive stand, it will shear off and break off, and then, like I say, the cold and the wind and the wet will penetrate and it will kill the colony. A 3-pound ratchet strap completely mitigates and eliminates that from happening, because even if it falls off the stand, the body as a whole will stay connected together. That can only be a good thing. But with the ratchet strap, you can quite easily mitigate the actual body of the hive falling off the stand completely. So what I like to do, regardless of what type of stands that I use, whether it's black plastic pallets or normal pallets or the nice splayed leg Abello stands that I have, I ratchet strap the strap down through and underneath the plastic. So if you look at this one here, like, I can't, I can't lift that up because it's gone down through the plastic, up the other side. Effectively, the hive And the plastic pallets are now one. What that gives you is a real benefit here. You've got stability. You've got a big, wide, flat stand at the bottom, and then you've got your hive at the top, which is the less stable part of this combination here. But because it's all ratcheted down together, the combined center of gravity is lowered, and that's what gives you the stability there. So regardless of whatever wind comes along here, Regardless of any animal, there is no way that the nuc can get knocked off from the stand. And there's no way that the nuc and stand combination can topple over because it just requires way too much force to ever allow that to happen. So this combination works well with the Abelo stand with splayed legs, and it works well with any form of pallet stand that you've got. It doesn't work well with a normal stand that doesn't have lateral stability. What that means is it doesn't have splayed legs. So if you've just got like straight legs like that, strapping the hive to the stand Probably not a good idea 'cause it's all just gonna come toppling over. But I keep my colonies like this all the way throughout the year. Doesn't do any damage to the bees, gives them a nice, safe, watertight environment, makes it easier for them because they don't really need to propolize stuff down anywhere near as much because you're ratcheting it down, you're forcing those gaps to close, you're providing really good water ingress protection, and you're making sure that any animal damage or any wind damage is completely eliminated. And I just think that's the very best for your bees for the sake of a £3 ratchet strap. If you enjoyed that video, please give it a thumbs up, hit the subscribe button, and hopefully see you next time.
