Weighing the hive (continued 2)

Once during January and here at the end of the month I measured the mass of my hive again. January has been a cold month (danish standards) and the average temperature was significantly different than for December.

Based on this I expected the use of food to increase during the past 2 weeks of January as a consequence of the the decreased temperature - but this was apparently not the case

As shown in the graph the loss of mass of the hive is pretty much constant from end November till now - no temperature dependence at all for the range -5 C to 5 C.

Considering the errors of the measurement:
- not super accurate suitcase scale used
- wet / dry hive (snow removed)
..then I would say that the use of a linear regression line is pretty valid.

As can be read from the slope the mass loss has in average been 42 g per day. In even numbers that is:
= 300 g/week or
= 1250 g/month
So for 5 months, November,December, January, February and March it totals to 6.25 kg as an absolute minimum. With the initial drop in mass of about 3 kg the hive should have about 10 kg of food available before winter, i.e. more than 4, or lets say 5 full frames of food reserve as an absolute minimum. when using a 12x10 box with 10 frames (warm built) as winter hive.

I am wondering if similar data is available for other hives. This would give an idea of how much variation can be expected. Otherwise I will probably do the same next year to see if I can repeat the results.