Hefting, fondant and the winter bees
Winter beekeeping is mostly not beekeeping. The hives are closed, the mouseguards are on, the entrances are reduced, and the only things I do are heft, look at the floor insert, and keep the roofs on in the wind. Hefting means tipping the hive slightly from the back with one hand and judging its weight, and it is unscientific until you have done it a few dozen times, at which point your hand learns what twenty kilos of stores feels like.
I weigh them properly as well, with a luggage scale hooked under the back of the floor, so that the hefting hand has something to check itself against. First of December: hive one 31 kg, hive two 26 kg, both measured as the back-end lift which is roughly half the total. In October they were 34 and 30. Hive two is the lighter colony and has used more, which fits with it being the one that was slower to settle after the autumn feed.
Fondant went on both at the end of November as insurance, a 1 kg block in a shallow tray over the feed hole in the crown board, with an empty eke to make room and the insulation back on top. Hive one ignored it entirely; the block was untouched after a fortnight, with bees not even coming up to look. Hive two had taken half of it in the same fortnight, which confirms the weight story, and I have put a second block ready for January.
Floor inserts: a week’s debris from hive one showed cappings in a band across four seams of comb, which is the cluster slowly eating its way through stores, and six mites. Hive two showed cappings across five seams and eleven mites. Neither number alarms me after the autumn treatment, but I will do an oxalic acid trickle on a cold day in late December when the colonies are broodless, because that is the one moment in the year the mites have nowhere to hide.
Otherwise, nothing. A strap over each roof against the gales, a check that the entrances are not blocked with dead bees after the first hard frost, and the association’s winter talks, which are the beekeeping equivalent of looking at seed catalogues.