Why do you need to care about the amount of honey that the bees have? Overwintering is by far that one extremely important reason. It is not possible for bees to go outside when the weather is cold so they just rely on their honey to stay warm and fed. Depending on the area where you live and the winter conditions that it gets, your bees require a specific quantity of honey stores for them to make it through winter.
Weighing the beehive in the fall will let you know about the honey supplies of your bees and if you have to start giving them syrup so they can survive up to spring season.
Weighing using bee scales is also important during other seasons of the year. When there is a honey flow, it is important to check daily or every two days to keep track of the amount of honey being produced by the bees. Their speed might actually surprise you.
If you conduct regular weighing and you experience a swarm, you could weigh again so that you can determine the number of bees that you lost. A pound approximately has 3,000 bees. For instance, the usual 3-pound package of bees contains 10,000 bees.
How to Weigh a Beehive
How should you weigh your beehive, then? There are actually not a lot of commercial options when it comes to weighing beehives. Tilting is one very cheap and easy way used by most beekeepers.
Tilting
Tilting is done best for the simple reason that beehives are quite heavy. It is possible for a large full hive to weigh as much as 300 pounds. You can save yourself a lot of trouble and anguish when you tilt your hive and just measure one side at a time.
You might want to buy sturdy spring-type bee scales (more at www.honigschleudern.eu) that could handle lots of weight. Tilt the hive with care to one side then slide the bee scale under it. Take note of the weight. Repeat the same process with the other side then add these two weights. The sum total must be more or less the hive’s weight.