Winter Capped Honey Bee Brood Monitoring Program

Each colony inspection should take 2-3 minutes.

1. Smoke the colony.
2. Remove supers or hive bodies until you can locate the cluster. If it is very cold, you may cover bees in removed boxes with an extra inner or outer cover.
3. Make note of colony strength. We consider clusters about the size of a basketball to be “normal” strength. Weak colonies have smaller clusters (softball-sized or smaller), while strong colonies are much larger than a basketball.
4. Carefully remove 1-3 frames from the center of the cluster. If there is capped brood on any of the frames, report “Yes” on the survey. If you find uncapped brood (eggs or larvae without wax cappings) and no capped brood, report “No” on the survey. Fewer than a dozen total capped brood cells that are chilled, dead, or not guarded by the bee cluster count as no brood.

For more information, refer to our video below:

Cells containing capped brood, or brood in the pupal stage, will have a slightly domed or convex wax capping. They have a rough, porous texture. This picture shows several dozen capped brood cells. If the inspected frame(s) looked like this, we would say yes, this colony has capped brood.

A colony may have eggs or larvae without wax cappings, but no capped brood. This picture shows both younger and older larvae. If the brood on all inspected frames looked like this, we’d say no, this colony does not have capped brood.

Capped honey is sometimes mistaken for capped brood. Compared to brood, the wax cappings on honey cells are smoother. The comb surface may have a rippled texture. This photo does not show any brood.

Often, bees in winter will form a tight cluster as they consume stored honey. Small patches of brood may still be present beneath the bees. In this case, we may need to move some bees aside to view the brood.