Winter prep window — target 60 lb net stores per colony by mid-October (≈75 lb measured food by the weigh-through method³). ~ weights & distribution are estimates

On track Watch closely Needs action

Queen

Weight¹

Box load²
food lb / box lb
solid = ⚖ weighed
striped = ≈ estimate
tan = brood box

Winter stores³

Climate⁴
24-h mean
band = target

Varroa⁵

Next visit

▸ Pull the Formic pads — due 9/18
▸ Then wash, and check eggs — formic can stall a queen
▸ Settle what the top medium holds — honey or syrup

▸ Pull the Formic pads — due 9/18
▸ Confirm eggs at that opening — formic can stall a queen
▸ Refill the feeder — empty since ~9/5

▸ Get Neroa and treat — the one dated item
▸ Still nothing moving 3 days on the DFM — look in the feeder
▸ Confirm the Neroa procedure with Chris

▸ Leave it shut to ~9/18 — eggs are the test
▸ Keep refilling from the top — ~35 lb to go
▸ If she fails, unite with the nuc (newspaper)

Dashboard generated Sep 7, 2026, 6:58 AM ET. Scale data ends Sep 6 10 PM; probe data ends Sep 7 4:15 AM (all four loggers current); newest inspection sheets still Sep 4 — the mentor visit with Chris, 3 days back. No hive has been opened since.

1  Weight: SolutionBee hive scales via the Hive data sheet, 10 PM readings through Sep 3. "Since last insp" runs from 10 PM the night before that hive's most recent inspection sheet; the dashed tick on the sparkline marks it. The Sep 4 mentor visit is the newest sheet on all four hives, so every column's baseline is the night of Sep 3 and every delta covers the same three days. Shed's 4-week slot is shown again now that the window opens on Aug 9 22:00, after the +52 lb of boxes that went on its scale that morning; East's stays n/a until Oct 7 per Chad's 9/3 ruling⁶ — its scale did not carry the hive until Aug 11. Read the 4-week figures as gross change, not stores gained — Strong, North and Shed all took large feeds inside the window.

2  Box load: composition from the inspection sheets of the last two weeks (a feeding-only sheet inherits the prior full inspection). Each bar shows food / box — food is what the bees can eat (bar fill), box adds that box's tare from the register. ⚖ = a number you actually weighed (box on a scale, or syrup by container math); ≈ = estimated or derived — from frame observations, or as the residual that makes the column reconcile. The stack is a snapshot as of the valuation date under each column — Strong, North and Shed are valued Sep 4 from the mentor visit and reconciled against the Sep 3 scale, which retires North's Aug 29 hand weights; East was not opened then either, so its Sep 2 valuation stands. Nothing has been opened since, so the three days of scale movement since Sep 4 all sit in the Δ bars rather than in any box. The dotted Δ SINCE bar is everything the hive scale has recorded since that date — its size is known, its location among the boxes is not, until the next weigh-through re-zeroes it. Gray EQUIPMENT bar: bottom board 4.6 + wood cover 7.5 + feeder body 5.5 = 17.6 lb (landing board unweighed; no inner cover — the feeder replaces it, Chad 9/1). Σ boxes + equipment + syrup + bees + Δ = today's scale weight.

3  Winter stores: scale-derived and net — gross − equipment tare (register drawn-frame tares; all four hives wear the 7.5 lb wood cover, Chad 9/1) − syrup still in the feeder − estimated bees − a normal brood ball (~10–13 lb of brood + beebread, per Chad's method 9/1). The 60 lb target is net stores in the boxes; feeder syrup ripens in at ×0.813. Full method: WINTER STORES METHOD page in the KNOWLEDGEBASE — going forward, hand-weighed boxes above the bottom box (target ≥75 lb measured food) replace these estimates.

4  Climate: 24-hour mean of the 15-minute probe readings (through Sep 7, 4:15 AM; all four loggers current, though East dropped 30 samples and North 11 over the week) — averaging one full day-night cycle removes the diurnal swing; arrows compare against the prior 24 h. Bands: brood nest 91–97°F, 50–65% RH. Every probe sits in its hive's bottom box, and only Shed's reads a true brood nest (7-day mean 95.2°F, daily swing 1.1°F — the tightest in the yard). Strong's 7-day mean has fallen to 89.8°F and North's to 86.6°F with an 11.2°F daily swing, so both now fail the true-nest test that Strong passed on Sep 4; East sits 12°F below target at 81% RH. Those three are following ambient air as the season cools, so a low reading means the cluster is not at the probe, not that the hive is cold. Shed's flat 95°F is the number worth watching: a queenless colony's nest sags as brood emerges unreplaced, and it has not started — too early to mean much, worth re-reading around Sep 12–16.

5  Varroa: all three counts are from Aug 26 washes (Strong 3, North 3, Shed 2 — Strong's and Shed's supplied by Chad Aug 30; the recordings died before the counts, sheets to be amended). No sample size is recorded for any of them: at a standard half-cup (~300 bees) they read 1.0%, 1.0% and 0.7% — all under the Aug–Sep threshold of 3 per 100 — but a smaller sample reads higher, so the sample size is the open question. East has never been washed. No wash was taken anywhere on Sep 4. Treatment went on that day as a schedule, not in answer to a count: Formic Pro at Strong and North (one packet each, pads off 9/18 — a post-treatment wash is the number that will matter), withheld at Shed because the vapour would risk the emerging queen, and East gets Neroa instead, chosen as the gentler option for a colony below strength, as soon as it can be sourced.

6  East's scale readings are accepted as accurate gross weights (Chad, 9/3). The scale was re-zeroed to 0.00 on Aug 9, so no delta spanning that date is shown — the 4-week slot stays n/a until Oct 7; the hive did not actually sit on the scale until Aug 11, and everything after that is a clean series (+11.8 Aug 11, +32.0 Aug 17, +15.7 feed Aug 20, +17.8 feed + 2 donated frames Aug 29 → 67.5 lb Sep 3 → 66.3 lb Sep 6, a drift of 0.4 lb/day against 2.4–2.9 lb/day at Strong and North). The feeder's ~8 lb is the Aug 29 scale step (+17.8) minus the ~8 lb the two donated frames account for (North dropped 8.2 lb that day with no feed), minus drawdown since.