For under a tenner you cn buy a bluetooth temperature monitor with a years battery life, so you could potentially log temperature information to you indoors on your smart phone if you had the hive close enough to your house. Pop it in to the middle of the brood-nest at your last inspection of the year and monitor the temperature of the cluster over winter - whch should tell you if they are brooding or not.
Some of these sensors detect humidity as well but my assumption is that the sensors will get propolised quite quickly and would not give a fair reading.
May your bees read the same books as you do.