Thermal Scanning a Hive in Winter

There is not much to do with your hives during the bitter cold months of winter other than wonder if you did enough in the fall to get them prepared for those long cold nights as spring flowers are just a daydream away. One of the biggest questions that comes to beekeepers minds is, “Is the colony still alive?”

The video below shows one way you can “see” into your hive during the cold bitter winter days without ever cracking open the lid. The glowing bubble as seen on one of the sides of the hive shows the heat signature of the cluster of bees inside the hive.

Also, in a year-long experiment, a temperature and humidity probe was left running in a hive, attached to the inside corner of a frame then covered with screen, recorded internal hive temperatures. To my surprise, it actually gets down to single digits a few times during the coldest nights. The hive was lightly wrapped with the silver foil bubble wrap-style insulation with a 1″ styrofoam insert on the inside of the horizontal hive lid. You can tell when they ramp up in spring with brood as they strive to keep the internal hive temperature in the 90s for months at a time!