In this video, UK beekeeper Laurence Edwards explains how to determine whether honey bee colonies have survived the winter. He cautions against opening hives in mid‑winter unless absolutely necessary (e.g., to heft a light colony or add fondant) and advises against removing frames before April. Edwards introduces the concept of “crossover day,” when unusually warm spells force winter bees—designed for long life and minimal brood—to start rearing brood, dramatically shortening their lifespan. He illustrates this with the 2022 “Beast from the East” event, where a warm spell led to massive brood rearing, followed by a sudden cold snap that caused colony collapse. Because weather in late winter and early spring is unpredictable, he recommends waiting until May (or late spring) to assess whether a colony truly made it through winter. He also outlines practical winter management steps, such as limited inspections, hefting, feeding fondant, and timing of frame removal, and points viewers to a separate “colony autopsy” video of a deadout for further learning.
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How do you know if your colony of bees has made it through winter? In this video, I'm going to show you how. So it's the middle of January now. I've been popping open some colonies because they're weighing a little bit light. We've been doing some mite treatments earlier in the month as well. I've got some monster colonies of bees covering all 10 frames. Have these colonies made it through winter? Definitely not. In this video, I'm going to tell you when I think is a suitable time to say whether a colony has made it through winter. So take a look at this colony here. It's the middle of January. Look at it. Do you think this colony is going to make it through winter? Looks pretty healthy, doesn't it? I've had colonies like this in the middle of January that have failed. They have not made it through the winter. Equally, look at this colony here. Do you think this colony here is going to make it through winter? Doesn't look good, does it? I've had colonies like that that have made it through winter, and not only made it through winter, but they've gone past the bigger colonies that looked really good in January. There are so many factors here in play. The size of that cluster is only one variable, and the only variable that really comes into account there is the fact that the bees are still alive. They're not dead yet. That cluster really doesn't tell you much more than that. Where I'm seeing it in the UK, middle of January. We are in the middle of winter. I don't open any of my beehives at this time of the year unless I'm going in, I'm hefting them, they're a little bit light, I'm opening them up to put fondant on. Definitely don't go in there just to look to satisfy my own curiosity. I leave them to it. What good can you do if you open up a colony and it's failing in January? You can't add a queen, you can't do anything. Don't take out any frames until April at the absolute earliest. So then why in January, if you've got big strong colonies, why do they not get through until May? And equally, if you've got small compact clusters, how do they overtake the big colonies when you're getting through to May? And obviously this is not an exact science, and there are so many variables in play here, but what happens is you get to a point called crossover day. Let's take an example. You've got that big strong colony there. That big strong colony there, is old winter bees. Bees in winter are designed to do nothing. They're not designed to do anything other than to cluster, keep the queen warm, keep the brood warm— the minimal amount of brood that you should have. They're designed to keep things warm and to live long. Now imagine we get the weather that we got in the middle of February about 3 years ago, where it was like 28, 29 degrees Celsius in the middle of February for 2 weeks. We had a situation like that over here. All of those older bees have to change their duty. Instead of just doing nothing and keeping a colony warm, they have to rear brood. And rearing brood is really bad for winter bees. It's not what they're designed to do. And the impact that it has is it massively shortens their lifespan. So in that year, we had something called the Beast from the East come in, from the east, of course. And you had all of these colonies that were bringing in all of this pollen. They were going wild. The weather was superb. We were thinking we are going to be on for bumper spring harvests here. And all of those older winter bees had their lifespan shortened massively by doing all of this brood rearing. And then what happened? Because you had this big cold snap, you had a perfect storm of really bad conditions. You had old winter bees that their lives were being shortened. You had a huge amount of brood in the colonies because the weather was so nice. And then you had an instant snap of cold weather, which meant all of those older winter bees needed to go back, cluster down, hunker down to try and get through that period, and because they'd reared so much brood, they died off earlier than if they hadn't have reared that brood. What happens when those older bees die off is that the brood is much more susceptible to being chilled. If that brood is chilled, then in most cases it will likely die if you've got really bad winter conditions. All of that leads to a dramatic collapse of that colony. So take a look at it in January— big, massive, strong colony. What's the weather going to be like at the back end of February, first week of March? You have no idea. So when to assess whether your colonies made it through the winter? I don't think you can make that assessment until May. In the UK, it's May. You can get snow in April. So many things can go wrong until then. The big strong colonies can fail. The small weak colonies can actually do very well because they don't start rearing brood. What you want is a nice cold winter With no false starts in the weather and no beekeepers poking their nose in, making it more difficult for the bees. So obviously you can take my advice if you want, or you can go and look at your bees as well. I think people are pretty good at this now, not taking a peek in until later on in the year, definitely not taking any frames out. We don't look in until the last couple of weeks of March, and we generally don't pull frames out unless they're expanding too big before the first 2 weeks of April. If you want to take a look at one of the colonies that didn't make it through, click this video here. I do a full colony autopsy of my first deadout of 2022.
