What do bees do when like now it gets cold with full hives?

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Joined
May 18, 2013
Messages
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Location
Traditional Surrey
Hive Type
National
Number of Hives
10-20 depending
I have a Demareed colony with two full Q- brood boxes above two supers above a QE above a Q+ brood box about half full. The temperature is falling to 5C or lower at night. What happens? They spread across the brood and shiver to keep temperatures up, cluster and sacrifice some brood or - nightmare - cluster in the top boxes away from HM?
 
I have a Demareed colony with two full Q- brood boxes above two supers above a QE above a Q+ brood box about half full. The temperature is falling to 5C or lower at night. What happens? They spread across the brood and shiver to keep temperatures up, cluster and sacrifice some brood or - nightmare - cluster in the top boxes away from HM?

They constrict together to keep cluster warm. Not spread.
 
One of the problems when bees get going early in the season and then weather cools back to more normal April temps. I imagine there will be some poorly mated queens from those who split early. On mine only this weekend seeing lots of drone brood, only a scattering of hatched drones on frames.
 
Thanks all.

Hopefully daytime conditions are not too bad; there's meant to be a lot of sunshine about but quite low overnight temps are a definite feature of the forecast and yes, maybe no perfect mating days for a while.
 
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And your queen cells are not in mating age for a while.

But there are lots of swarming there and new queens waiting weathers.

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