‘They are just little miracles’: Anchorage beekeeper has successful winter season

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) - Tim Huffman loves his bees. He admires everything about them, from their perfect hexagonal combs to the wonders they craft in the dark within their colonies.

“They are just little miracles,” said Huffman, a hobbyist beekeeper who has been raising colonies on the top of the 49th State Brewing Company warehouse since 2020.

After surviving a harsh winter season, almost 200,000 little miracles buzz around the rooftop, living in six colonies.

“I love how they organize themselves in a way that lets them get through this winter, this sub-tropical insect in this sub-arctic environment and they still find a way to do it,” Huffman said.

A total of six of the seven colonies that began the season made it through the winter. That high success rate has Huffman smiling.

“It’s very satisfying. When I started, I had so many people telling me you can’t get bees through the winter up here,” Huffman said.

Huffman has developed a system utilizing materials with insulating properties like polystyrene to keep the bees insulated, and uses reflecting materials to produce heat. A window lets Huffman peek at the bees without exposing them to colder air.

In the last three winters, Huffman has had three of the same colonies survive.

Now, in addition to keeping his bees buzzing, Huffman has a new mission — he is working on making sure his bees do not swarm away.

According to Huffman, bees reach their peak population during the time of the solstice. During the weeks leading up to it, their population size can double within two weeks. Swarming occurs when a honey bee colony becomes too congested. When bees swarm, they go to look for other places to build new colonies. But when they do that, both the queen and 50% of their population leave the colony. In order to avoid that, Huffman has to manipulate the situation.

“We added extra comb to give the queen room to lay and we removed six frames of bees and brood that I will put another queen in tomorrow. So they have a lot more space and hopefully that convinces this colony that they should not swarm,” Huffman said.

That’s the key to a big honey harvest season.

To learn more about beekeeping in Alaska, you can follow Huffman’s journey on his YouTube channel.

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