Winter Management (?)

I've been unable to find a dry, or warm enough, day to do some winter management on my bees; anytime I've been free it seems it's been either too cold and windy or just too wet.

At long last the weather was warm enough for me to take a trip out to the apiary today.  I've been fretting over the fact I have a queen excluder on top of a deep and under a couple of (heather honey) filled supers.  I was concerned I'd been separating the queen from a food source.  I wasn't so worried for right now, it is more a concern for the new year.  If the queen can't reach the honey she and/or the bees might starve.

Anyway, it was warm enough, and even though I say so myself, I was a bit of a ninja beekeeper today; in and out before they noticed!  However, I wasn't so quick that I didn't notice there were a lot of bees in the hive and some reasonably hefty boxes.  So I'm quite happy at this stage that there's sufficient stores in the hive for the winter.

All the hives in the apiary looked busy so there's reason to be cheerful.

Am I losing it?

First I was organised, then surprised, now I'm into a bit of self doubt!

I went through the old "combined" tall hive with the tower of boxes in the hope I'd be able to sort things out a bit.

Last time out I found the bee escapes hadn't worked and I also found I had a Queen above a bee escape in a super of brood. So I made up a hive from that super of brood, the "harvested" heather honey and the deep I was trying to clear.

This time out decided to just go through the tall hive and remove bee escapes and have a look to see what's been going on.

Nothing above the queen excluder - just capped and uncapped honey. There is one full super and three partially full ones on this hive. There is also a deep under a queen excluder - and in this deep/brood box?  I found brood!  So there I was trying to combine two hives each with a queen! D'oh!

I went through this hive a couple of weeks ago and had convinced myself there was no brood. I thought it needed help! Now I'm confused. Perhaps a couple of weeks ago there was a dearth of forage and she simply shut down for a rest? 

Anyway I just hope I did no lasting damage. I wasn't able to complete going through the tall hive - I'd really love to find the queen in order to satisfy myself there really is one and not some kind of skinny queen that could get across bee escapes and queen excluders! 

Maybe I need a break! I think I need a better, more effective, bee escape!