How much honey should you leave for winter?

“How much honey should you leave for winter?” is one of those questions that sounds simple until you’ve watched a colony starve in March. How much honey should you leave for winter depends on your climate, your hive setup, and the kind of bees you’re running, but the safest habit in temperate and cold areas is to aim heavy, not “probably fine”.

This is written for hobby and small-scale beekeepers (0–50 hives) who deal with real winters, long stretches of confinement, and spring that arrives later than you’d like.

What changes how much honey should you leave for winter?

Climate and winter length

Winter isn’t just cold, it’s time. A colony can handle a short cold snap with modest stores. A five-month winter with a late spring build-up is where starvation shows up.

A few reference points from extension and regional guides show how wide the range can be:

• In colder parts of the U.S., recommendations commonly land around 80–100 lb (36–45 kg) of honey left on the hive.
• In Atlantic Canada guidance, a minimum of 60–80 lb (27–36 kg) of honey is cited for overwintering.
• In the UK guidance from the National Bee Unit, a colony is often estimated to need about 18–22 kg of honey for winter, with larger hives sometimes needing more.

Those aren’t contradictions. They’re different winters and different assumptions about how long the bees are locked in, how early brood rearing ramps up, and whether the beekeeper is willing to feed later.

If you’re in a place where bees can fly and take cleansing flights through winter, you can often overwinter on less. If you’re in a place where snow can sit for weeks and spring drags on, build a bigger safety margin.

Hive type and usable space

Hive “size” matters because it changes how much food can be stored close to the cluster.

• A single deep Langstroth has less buffer than a double deep.
• Poly hives and well-insulated setups often reduce consumption, but they do not eliminate the need for ample stores.
• If you overwinter in nuc boxes, you usually need less total honey, but you need it placed correctly because small clusters can’t travel far in cold.

Regional checklists that talk in hive weight can be useful as a sanity check. For example, Ontario guidance suggests a single brood chamber colony should weigh roughly 70–90 lb going into winter, and double brood heavier than that. (That’s not “70–90 lb of honey”. That’s the whole stack. Still, it’s a good reality check if your hives feel suspiciously light.)

Colony strength and health

A strong colony generally uses more food because there are more bees to feed, but it also winters better because it can regulate the cluster and access stores more reliably.

Two hard truths from real yards:

• Weak colonies often die with food still in the box because they can’t move sideways or up to reach it.
• Mite-loaded colonies tend to burn through winter bees and dwindle early, and once the population crashes, the colony can’t manage temperature or reach stores.

Ontario’s winter readiness checklist puts it plainly: high varroa into fall weakens the winter bees and sets colonies up to fail. The National Bee Unit guidance also ties winter losses to viruses associated with varroa and stresses timely control.

What the beekeeper does (or doesn’t do)

A few management choices change the food math:

• Late-season splits or requeening delays can leave you with smaller clusters and less stored honey.
• Pulling “just one more super” in late summer is how people buy themselves winter feeding chores.
• Poor ventilation and damp hives don’t just kill bees, they push the colony to work harder, and harder work means more consumption (and more risk).

Practical winter stores targets with numbers you can use

If you want a simple way to think about it, use two numbers: a minimum you won’t go below, and a target you try to hit when winters are real.

Here’s a practical set of targets for temperate to cold climates. Treat these as starting points, then adjust to your local winter length and your bees.

Hive setup	Minimum (shorter/milder winter)	Target (longer/cold winter)
Full-size colony (typical)	~18–22 kg (40–50 lb) honey	~36–45 kg (80–100 lb) honey
Very cold / long confinement areas	~27–36 kg (60–80 lb) honey	~41–45+ kg (90–100+ lb) honey
Nucs (well-provisioned)	~23 kg (50 lb) honey equivalent	Often better combined or boosted than “pushed through”

A few opinionated notes that save colonies:

• If you’re unsure whether you’re “mild” or “cold”, assume you’re cold. Underfeeding is expensive.
• I’d rather overwinter a colony with extra stores than gamble on a perfect early spring. A dead colony doesn’t get to use the leftover honey anyway.
• Don’t forget placement: most winter clusters move up as they eat. A heavy box of honey below the cluster can be useless if the bees can’t break cluster and move down.

Estimating stores in your hives without guessing

You don’t need a lab scale. You need a repeatable method.

1) Frame counting (fast and surprisingly accurate)

For Langstroth gear, a good rule of thumb is:

• Deep frame full of capped honey: about 6 lb
• Medium frame full of capped honey: about 4 lb
• Shallow frame full of capped honey: about 3 lb

For British Standard brood frames, the NBU guidance notes a full brood frame can contain about 2.2 kg of honey.

How to use this in the yard:

• Count only frames that are mostly capped or clearly heavy.
• Discount “pretty frames” that are half nectar and half uncapped shine. That stuff can disappear or ferment.
• Add it up, then add a safety margin if your winter is long.

Example: If you run 10 hives in a cool climate and you see 8 deep frames that are truly packed and capped in the top box, that’s roughly 8 × 6 = 48 lb. If the lower box has another 6 frames with solid arcs, that’s another ~36 lb. Now you’re in the 80+ lb neighborhood, which is where winter stops being a constant worry for many cold-winter beekeepers.

2) Weighing (best if you’re data-minded)

A simple luggage scale and a strap under the bottom board works well. Lift the back a few centimeters, take a reading, then lift the front and add them together. Do it the same way every time so your comparisons mean something.

If you like tidy routines, add “quick fall weight check” to your standard notes. The mistake I see is beekeepers doing one weight check, then never repeating it. The value is in the trend.

3) Hefting (the old-school skill worth learning)

Hefting is just lifting one side or the back and judging whether it feels “reassuringly heavy” compared to your mental baseline.

A nice practical cue from Atlantic Canada guidance: try a one-hand lift on the box handle. If it’s easy, they likely need more; if it’s difficult, you’re probably in the safe zone.

Hefting works best when you:

• Heft in early fall when you know which colonies are heavy, then repeat midwinter.
• Compare hives in the same yard. Your hands can tell “heavy vs light” better than “exactly 78 lb”.

If a colony is light: feed early, then switch to solids

Timing is everything. Syrup is an autumn tool. Fondant and dry sugar are winter tools.

Autumn: heavy syrup while bees can still process it

If you’re short on stores after pulling honey, feed thick syrup and get it done.

• Multiple guides recommend 2:1 sugar-to-water (by weight) for fall feeding because it’s less water for the bees to evaporate.
• Ontario guidance stresses finishing feeding before it gets too cold for bees to fly and cure syrup, with a rule-of-thumb to be fully fed by mid-October in Ontario conditions.

Practical yard advice:

• Feed inside the hive (top feeder, pail feeder, jar feeder). Open feeding invites robbing and bad habits.
• Feed hard and fast rather than dribbling small amounts for weeks. Slow feeding in late fall is how you end up with half-ripened syrup and stress.
• Keep entrances reduced if robbing pressure is high.

If you want a structured way to plan volumes per colony and stop guessing, use a feeding schedule and batch-mixing plan like the Feeding and syrup planning tool. It’s especially handy once you’re managing 5–20 hives and mixing syrup starts to feel like a part-time job.

Late fall and winter: don’t pour syrup into cold hives

Once it’s properly cold, syrup becomes a bad fit. Bees may not take it, and you’re adding moisture when moisture is already your enemy.

For winter, use solid feed:

• Fondant blocks, candy boards, sugar cakes
• Dry granulated sugar as emergency feed (Mountain Camp style)

Alabama Extension describes a simple Mountain Camp setup: newspaper over the top bars, granulated sugar poured on and lightly moistened, with a shim for space.

If you’re choosing between “do nothing” and “add emergency sugar”, add the sugar. It won’t fix a failing mite situation, but it can prevent pure starvation.

Signs a colony is running short (without cracking the brood nest)

• The hive suddenly feels light when hefted compared to your fall baseline.
• Bees are tight to the inner cover on a warmer day (often looking for food above).
• You can see empty comb right next to the cluster through the top bars on a quick peek.

The NBU guidance makes a key point: colonies can starve even with food present if they become isolated from it, so checking where the food is relative to the cluster matters.

A quick word on “bad winter honey”

Most colonies winter fine on their own honey. But some honeys are harder on bees when they’re confined for long stretches. Heather and honeydew are commonly flagged as higher in indigestibles, increasing the risk of dysentery when bees can’t fly.

If you’re in an area where those flows dominate late, I prefer to leave a balanced mix and top up with thick syrup rather than forcing bees to live on a single difficult honey all winter.

Tools that make the decision easier

A few practical helpers can tighten up your routine:

• Start with the calculators and checklists in the tools hub if you’re building a consistent winter-prep workflow.
• Use the Feeding syrup planner to estimate how much heavy syrup you actually need per hive and how much sugar to buy.
• If mites are part of your winter-loss story (they usually are), map out your season with the Varroa strategy planner so your winter bees aren’t raised under heavy mite pressure.
• For beginners or anyone resetting their process, the inspection checklists and the first-year planner help you time the key “don’t miss this” moments that lead to well-provisioned hives.

How much honey should you leave for winter comes down to one habit: measure stores in early fall, then correct fast while the bees can still handle syrup. Get your colonies heavy, healthy, and mite-controlled, then do calm midwinter checks and add solid feed early if anything feels light. That’s how you stop gambling and start overwintering on purpose.