We all want to know what is going on inside our hives in the winter, and its usually too cold to open them. I have tried it all, from putting your ear to the hive and knocking on it to get the bees to make more noise. A stethoscope works ok but its still tough to hear unless you get it just right. I have a thermal image camera which works well but is tricky to get a good reading depending on where your bees are located, if the cluster is not close to the outside of the box or if your hives are close together you cant get a good image with the camera which can be very deceiving to tell exactly what is going on. They are good to tell the position and if they are still alive, but are quite costly. But I found a app called Fennex (I used a IPhone but there is many other apps also), which is a hearing app, that connects to wireless earphones and uses the microphone on your phone. So once you get it set up and connected you can push your phones microphone to the hive opening and hear very clearly what is going on inside the hives without disturbing the bees. It doesn’t give you a lot of information but you can hear bees buzzing so it gives you what you really want to know. Just wanted to share this as I’m always monitoring my bees to see if there is anything I need to do or improve to give the bees their best chance of getting through our tough winters. Hope you enjoy.