Jon

I spent the first 7 weeks of 2010 out of the country so the bees were free from any temptation I may have had to tinker.
I made my first check on 21st February and was really pleased to find signs of life in all 13 colonies and nucs
All were treated with Oxalic on 22nd December and I had fed over 100k of sugar in September and October.
I also did an Apiguard treatment which started in mid September.
I didn't lift any frames of bees out as it is still far too cold, so there could be a drone layer or a missing queen in some of them. It will probably be near the end of March before I can do a proper inspection.
Some colonies had halved in size since December although they may just be in a tighter cluster.
The smallest of them are on only two frames.
I confined any smaller colonies at the front of the brood box by placing a piece of plastic (home made dummy board) and a rectangle of polystyrene against the back end of the cluster.
One colony in a full sized brood box was reduced to 4 frames at the front.
This gives them a smaller space to heat and should encourage brood rearing to start.
I think it was Gavin who mentioned that AMM like to cluster at the front of the box and most of mine certainly do that, although they are "native type" rather than pure AMM.
Another observation is that most of the colonies had 4-5 frames of capped stores which haven't been touched yet, so no need for any more fondant.

Today, 4th March, all colonies were flying on a sunny day around 7c and I even saw some pollen coming in.
My current to do list includes:

-mark half a dozen queens which I should have marked in September last year.
-take samples of 30-50 bees from several colonies for wing morphology tests. (I had 4 checked at the end of last year) I want to bring more knowledge of genetics into my choice of breeder colonies this year.
-tidy and organise all the equipment I have in the shed.
-try grafting of larvae for queen cell production. The simplest way is to wait for a colony to make queen cells and then exchange larvae from a more preferred colony. I haven't tried this before but Bubo/Finman on the BBKA forum has written about it.