Track this against your own hives - free, on the web and the App Store.
Where this comes from. The National Bee Unit’s winter preparation fact sheet (June 2024), its sugar feeding guideline (November 2025) and its European foulbrood fact sheet (October 2024). Where we give a rule of thumb rather than a published figure, we say so. Sources at the foot of the page.
Pick the day
The NBU puts a floor under this. Colonies should not be inspected below 10 °C, and between 10 and 14 °C they can only be opened quickly. 4 So 14 °C is the bottom of the range for a proper look through a colony, not a beekeepers’ rule of thumb.
Below that you are taking more heat out of the colony than the information is worth. Pick a day that is as warm and sunny as possible, and it helps if some bees are flying, because it means they are not in a tight cluster. 1
In much of the UK that last day lands in October. Watch the forecast in late September and take the day when it comes, rather than putting it off to a weekend that turns out to be 9 °C and blowing.
Do the feeding and the treatment first. The order for the whole autumn is supers off, then treat, then feed, then this.
What you are actually checking
The NBU lists six things to assess. Everything below is one of these: 1
- Enough food stores
- Enough adult bees
- Queen-right
- Free of disease
- Free of pests
- The hive itself in sound condition
1. The queen, without hunting for her
You need to know the colony has a laying queen. You do not need to see her, and in October you should not go looking.
Shaking frames and working through a box in the cold to find a queen is how she gets chilled, dropped in the grass or rolled. Evidence is enough: eggs, or young open brood, tell you she was laying within the last few days.
Be aware the brood nest shrinks right down at this time of year, so a small patch is normal, not a problem. No brood at all and no eggs in October is worth a second visit on the next warm day.
2. Get the box down to the size of the colony
Empty space is space the bees have to keep warm. If a colony that lived on a double brood box through summer has shrunk, put it down to a single. 1 Keep the frames with the stores and the brood nest, and take out what is left.
If it is somewhere in between, use dummy boards to shrink the space to fit the colony rather than leaving frames they cannot cover. Small colonies are the real worry here. We lost three where wax moth finished off already weak hives. Now a weak colony gets merged, or moved onto clean frames in a nuc, before winter.
This is also the moment the supers and any empty box used for the feeder come off, if they have not already. Single brood, double brood and the super you left on covers weighing the stores first and deciding the box arrangement from the arithmetic.
3. The queen excluder comes out
Take it out. Leave it in over winter and the cluster can move up through the excluder as it follows the stores. The queen is left behind on the wrong side, where she dies of cold and starvation. 1
Taking it out is a thirty second job. Leaving it in is a well known way to lose a colony that was otherwise going to be fine.
4. Count the stores, do not guess them
Count frames of sealed stores while the box is open. A full British Standard brood frame holds about 2.3 kg, and the target going into winter is about 20 kg. 2 Larger frames such as Commercial or Langstroth hold up to 3 kg. 1
Write the number down. Hefting only tells you much once you have lifted the same hive several times, and a count from October is what makes the January heft mean anything. Autumn feeding has the full arithmetic.
5. Clean the floor
The floor collects dead bees, wax cappings and debris all summer, and a mat of dead bees across the entrance in January is a real blockage.
The easy way: lift the brood box onto an upturned roof, swap the dirty floor for a clean spare, and take the dirty one home to scrape. If you have no spare, scrape it in place and brush it out.
On an open mesh floor, take the inspection tray out for the winter, unless the site is very exposed to wind. 1 It helps with ventilation and lets debris fall through instead of collecting.
6. Scrape the propolis, but not all of it
Scrape enough that the boxes sit flat and you can get them apart in spring: the rims, the runners, the lugs, and the crown board. Take off brace comb between boxes.
Do not strip the hive back to bare wood. Propolis is what the bees seal the draughts with, and they put it where they want it. The aim is a hive you can open next year, not a clean one.
7. Damp is the enemy, not cold
The NBU puts this plainly: it is the damp, rather than the cold, that kills bees. 1 Bees make a lot of water vapour, and it condenses on cold hive walls and drips back onto the cluster.
- Check the roof for leaks. A leaking roof soaks the cluster all winter.
- Set the hive to slant very slightly forwards so water runs out of the entrance.
- Get hives off the ground on a sound stand, on firm well-drained ground, out of the wind and out of any frost pocket.
- Keep the ventilation the hive is designed to have. Roof, entrance and floor is usually enough.
- Insulation over the crown board is fine, and worth it in a hard winter, provided ventilation is maintained. Mouse guards, woodpeckers and insulation covers what to fit and when.
8. Mouse guard on, and strap it down
Water matters through the winter too, because bees use it to soften stored honey: Water for bees.
Fit mouse guards. Mice nest in hives over winter and can kill a colony. 1 Fit them before it gets cold enough for the mouse to want in, not after.
Strap the hive to the stand with a ratchet or hive strap. It stops roofs blowing off and stops livestock and badgers knocking hives over. Do not overtighten on a poly hive, because you will crush it. Leave the entrance clear. Hives in high wind covers the method and which weather warning is the one to act on.
What to have in before autumn covers guards, straps, insulation and woodpecker mesh, and when to order them.
9. Look at the brood while you can
This is the last chance to look at brood properly until spring, so use it. Where no foulbrood is known in your area, checking for disease signs twice a year is the baseline. Where EFB has been found locally, make it three times, and change your comb more often. 3 The next proper look is the first inspection of the year, and it is a shorter job than this one.
Registering on BeeBase is how you find out whether there is anything near you in the first place.
Then leave them alone
After this, no more full inspections. Winter checks are a different thing: warm sunny day, some bees flying, lid off, look, lid on. The NBU puts it at about 20 seconds. 1
A clear crown board makes those checks much easier, because you can see the cluster without letting the heat out.
Heft every couple of weeks, and look inside every two or three weeks when the weather allows. A colony can starve with stores still in the box if the cluster ends up away from them, and hefting will not show you that. 2
The short version
- Take the day when it comes, around 14 °C, usually October.
- Evidence of a queen. Do not go hunting for her.
- Box down to the size of the colony. Excluder out.
- Count frames of stores and write the number down.
- Clean floor, scrape enough to open it in spring, tray out of a mesh floor.
- Roof sound, hive tilted forward, off the ground, out of the wind.
- Mouse guard on, strapped down.
- Then 20 second checks only.
This guide is general information, not legal advice. Rules change - always check the current guidance on GOV.UK before relying on it.