- The queen will be laying as it gets warmer and the brood will need food and warmth; a piece of polystyrene 25 – 50 mm thick placed over the crown board under the roof will help to keep heat in.
- Check floor for signs of a mouse getting into the hive, such as large pieces of wax on the ground at the hive entrance. Lift the cover board and smell; an ammoniacal smell of acetamide indicates a mouse. If you have a mouse in the hive get rid of it by lifting the brood box.
- Make up frames but leave the wax fitting until March.
- Clean old frames.
- Blowlamp your spare solid floors (which should have been replaced by varroa screen floors), spare cover boards and brood boxes.
- Make up new equipment such as: Spare crown boards, Dummy boards, Snelgrove board, Hive stand.
- Feeders – one for each hive and one for the nucleus hive.
- You need about 50% more equipment than you have as occupied hives. A spare brood box for every two occupied hives (for artificial swarming or shook swarms), and a nucleus hives (one for two hives) so you can remove the queen when required etc.
- Clean the smoker and queen excluders.
- Unblock entrances if they get snowed up.
- Check to see wind or animals have not overturned the hives. If they are overturned, reassemble the hives and give them a feed on top of the frames.
- Woodpeckers can be deterred with small mesh wire wrapped around the hives.
- Feeding candy, to make up for your autumn deficiencies, should be placed on the frames above the cluster.
- Review the hive positions re sun and wind; this can be a good time to move a hive within the apiary.
- Check the varroa screen below the brood box for fallen varroa. See DEFRA leaflet "Managing Varroa" for treatment with oxalic acid.
- Buy a 2ft square paving slab as a base for one hive. Put the base in place and level after a month on the ground.
- Read as many books on beekeeping as possible – if nothing else it will serve to show you how many ways there are of doing the same thing!