We're still in our first year of beekeeping, so everything is still new. We have been concerned about the bees during a really bad December. It was both very cold and we had a lot of snow. We had two big blizzards around the holidays with a total of more than 36 inches of new snow in about a week. The snow came with high winds and we had drifts over 4 feet high from the first storm. I've got more details and some photos on our blog:
http://beesandblooms.blogspot.com/2006/12/december-blizzard-v20.html Today was the return of the Chinook winds. (Chinook is a word the native americans used for "Snow Eater".) The winds are warm and from the west and help to melt the snow. It brought the temps into the lower 50s (F) for the first time in over a month and the bees emerged! We saw some coming out for clensing flights and perhaps doing other housecleaning chores.
It was a great relief to see they survived. :-D
[edit: the climate data had a bug, I'll try to get it updated soon. In the mean time, you can check my weather page and see what's going on at this link:
http://www.leyner.org/ ]