My bees are on a farmer friend’s property and there’s no natural wind break on the north side of the hives, so I need to do a couple of things to protect them. I can’t erect a wind break because it’ll create obstacles for my farmer that he doesn’t need so I just use Lowe’s House Wrap to wrap the hive stands and north side of the hives. I’ve done this for about 10 years and it works well.
I wrap the hive stands because I use screened bottom boards and rather than close them up during the winter, I wrap to keep the wind from blowing through below the hives and pulling the warm air out of the hives.
One of the fun advantages to wrapping the hive stands is that a micro-climate is created below the hives that not only adds a bit of warm air for the hives with screened bottom boards, but I often get bunnies nesting down there as well.
Following is a video showing Becca and me getting the hives ready to go this year. Thank you Becca for your help!