Weighing the hive - food status

In the past months I have weighed my bee hive 3 times after I did the final feeding. Last time I weighed the hive was the 26th of December. I am just using my suit case weight which makes it quite easy to do the weighing.

It is actually quite interesting to see how much food the bees uses during the winter time. So far it look like this

I am assuming that the initial weight loss is from the fact that the bees were still leaving the hive but coming back with only little pollen or nectar. Hence, they use much more food than they can collect. Then the bees get ready for winter and fill themselves with honey before the form a cluster for winter.

From the second to the third point the bees are dormant and do not take up any nutrients since they are still full from the initial feast :). Then from the third to the forth point the weight loss could represent the average of what the bees will use throughout the winter. I will be interesting to see if the slope if the curve will stay pretty much constant from now on. The slope between the last two points is 56 g/day.

Now one thing that I would expect to have an influence on the food consumption is temperature. The points have been measured from end October to end December so far and the average temperature of November was 5.9 C on the region where I live, and in December (so far) it was 4.3 C. So pretty much constantly 5 C with some fluctuation of cause. This is why I assume that the changes in weight loss is due to changes in the activity of the bees.

I hope the we will get some cold weather in January just to see the effect of temperature. Also, I can use the mass of the hive as a check up on the bees during the winter. I am already out of honey, so next year I want to harvest twice (at least), so I have to be sure that my little busy workers are doing fine :)