What should I be looking for this time of year in hive?

[SallyD]

Greetings all! This weekend in Atlanta the temp will be 70 so I was going to go in the hive and check things out. Should I attempt to check out the brood box and pull out frames or is that too disruptive this time of year? Should I rotate honey frames if the ones in the middle are out of honey? Let me know your thoughts on what to look for and any action I should take. This is unusually warm weather so I wanted to take advantage of it. Thank you for your help.

[Tia]

I know lots of beeks who are going to disagree with me, but here's where I stand with opening the hives this weekend. . .even though it's supposed to be in the mid-seventies: I won't do it. It's supposed to get cold again next week with snow predictions for February. The girls have propolized their boxes up all snug to be safe, dry and warm during those really cold days. I know they went into the winter with plenty of stores. These warmer days, I've been watching their activities. They have field feeders that they could care less about, so they obviously have plenty of honey (hefting the boxes also tells me I'm right), but lately they're raiding the bird feeders, collecting seed dust in lieu of pollen! That tells me the queen is laying and they need more protein than is available in the hives. I've also seen them collecting pollen from blooming dandelions, but since they're converging at the feeders, I've been making a dry mixture of sugar and BeeMax and putting it in the bird feeders! They're going through a cup and a half of it every day! They've worked out a deal with the birds who get their seed early morning and at dusk; the bees get their BeeMax in the middle of the day.

I say just watch the front of your hives, heft the boxes to check stores, and watch your girls to see if they're needing anything.

[mike haney]

Never pull out brood frames if there are not enough drones FLYING to mate with a virgin replacement queen
Many hives are killed by a damaged queen that the bees replace but can't get their new queen mated
You don't have kill your queen just "roll" her replacing or pulling a frame from the brood nest and damage a leg, the bees will know and try to supercede her
Good Luck, Mike

[SallyD]

Very good advice! That is exactly why I asked. I think I will observe from the outside