Use this quiet time to take stock of your equipment and order what you expect to need for the coming season in good time, not forgetting frames and foundation. Most of us end up needing more than we thought! Maybe you might even clean out your bee shed!
If you are switching from solid to mesh floors and have old cedar floors as spare, I would keep at least one to use when hiving a swarm – they are reckoned to prefer a defined space. You can then switch the floor when the swarm has settled in and started to raise brood. An alternative use, suggested by member Francis Hall, is as the top of a bird table – a cedar floor will outlast most other materials in this role.
It sounds an expensive luxury, but over years I have built up a stock of spare brood boxes, which means that I can make sure at this time of year that these are scraped and well scrubbed out with hot water and bleach, and treated on the outside with preservative if necessary. I can then use these when spring cleaning, to transfer stocks into a completely clean brood body on a clean floor. Done quickly in the middle of a warm day in mid-March
(I have done it earlier in an early spring), keeping combs in the same order and not exposed for more than a few moments, I have never found that this was other than beneficial.
Up to mid-January we have had an unusually mild winter – what a contrast with last year. Anyone treating with oxalic acid after early January probably found their bees surprisingly lively, if not positively ungrateful.
Lots of stocks have been reported as bringing in pollen, so I imagine that queens have started to lay again, encouraged by the mild days and nights. This means that food will be used up more rapidly, and you need to keep an eye on the bees’ provisions. If your bees are right over at one side of a box, it is worth checking if the central combs are empty, and moving combs over from the other side if those are full. This is to avoid so-called isolation starvation when bees starve amid plenty, being unable to cross back over empty middle combs in a spell of colder weather. Cover the bees to keep their warmth in when checking. If you have a more or less unoccupied box of stores over the occupied combs, make sure the combs over the bees are well stocked with honey.
