Southern Winters Aren’t a Day Off — ABJ on Warm-Climate Prep

Tara Chapman has a piece in the October 2026 American Bee Journal called “Winter Preparation and Hive Management in the South,” and she opens by admitting her northern friends might laugh at the title. I did not laugh. I nodded. She keeps bees in Central Texas, and a lot of what she describes sounds like home down here in Brazoria County.

Her point is simple: southern winters are easier in some ways, but they are not free. We don’t need to wrap or insulate hives, the bees don’t need nearly the honey stores a Minnesota colony does, and we get plenty of days warm enough for a quick peek or to top off feed. The trouble is the in-between. In her words, our winters are cold enough that they don’t support long foraging stretches, but warm enough that bees fly out on a lot of days anyway. Bees flying with not much blooming means bees burning food. That’s why she says she actually hopes for a cooler-than-normal winter.

She also makes a case I like: stop thinking strictly in spring, summer, fall, and winter, and think about what food is actually out there for the colony. A plant that blooms in May in Texas might not bloom until July up north, or not grow there at all. The bees’ needs are the same everywhere. What changes is what the yard and the fencerows have to offer.

For her part of Texas she puts the coldest stretch at December through February, lows around 44°F and highs in the low 60s, with a few hard freezes that can show up as early as late November or as late as March. Out here closer to the Gulf it usually runs a little softer and a lot wetter, but the pattern is the same. Mild weather is exactly what gets you in trouble if you stop checking.

So my October list for the yard: heft the boxes and keep an eye on stores instead of assuming a mild winter means they’re fine, keep feed handy for the warm days when I can open up quickly, keep the straps on and the stands level before the norther season, and keep counting mites, because a colony going into winter with a heavy load won’t care how mild it is.

Read Tara Chapman in ABJ: Winter Preparation and Hive Management in the South (October 2026; the full article is in the print and digital issue).

Back in the yard: month-by-month work and the rest of the journal.