I met up with my apprentice, Sarah, of Bee Happy Plants at a meeting of DARG, the Devon Apicultural Research Group today and we were able to compare graphs of temperatures taken inside and outside hives: the National hive on my allotment and my TBH at Sarah's, 20 miles west of me and 50 feet lower. Interestingly they both had a sudden large temperature rise, indicating brood rearing starting, on the same day: 2nd January. Unexpectedly, Sarah's graph showed the outside temperature was an almost exact mirror image of the inside temperature: one rising while the other fell and vice versa. My guess is that, in the TBH, we managed, by luck rather than judgement, to place the sensor right in the middle of the cluster and when it gets cold the bees cuddle up, warming the sensor as well as each other. Chris *********************************************** The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html