We've had a couple of polar vortexes (vortices?) already this winter with temps falling into the low single digits. But there have been interludes of 40+ (F) as well which could have led to excessive honey consumption. I use a "luggage" scale I purchased on the Internet for about $11 with shipping to weigh my hives. The device is a plastic handle with some electronics inside and a hook which is intended to capture the handles of a piece of luggage. But for hive work, it slips under the bottom board and allows one to measure how many pounds (or kg, or g or oz) of force are bearing down on the hive supports when the hive is just lifted off the support. Do this on both ends, add together the two numbers and you have the weight of the hive.
My four hives (three medium boxes each) weighed on this day from 70.4 to 76 pounds. The empty (with frames) weight of this arrangement is just under 30 pounds. This indicates I have at least 40 pounds of wax, bees and honey at this stage of the winter. I figure there are no more than 4 pounds of wax and 3 or 4 pounds of bees (I could hear their slight buzzing when I put my ear to each hive) so that calculates to at least 30 pounds of honey which is a number I am comfortable with at this stage.
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