The first hive inspection of the year: when to open and what to check

After a winter of hefting hives and watching entrances, the first proper look inside is when a beekeeper finds out how each colony did. It is also the inspection most likely to do harm, because it is tempting to open too early, stay too long and pull out every frame. The first visit of the year should be short, on the right day, and aimed at five questions. Everything else can wait a week or two.

Is it warm enough?

Wait for a calm day warm enough that bees are flying freely from the entrance, around 15°C, 59°F, in the shade or warmer, ideally around midday. Early forage in flower, willow, maple, dandelion or gorse depending on where you are, is a good sign the colony has started rearing brood in earnest. In the UK and much of the northern United States that day usually comes in March or April; in southern Australia and New Zealand, in August or September.

Before that day, check from outside. Heft the hive to judge its stores. Watch the entrance: bees carrying pollen in means there is brood to feed and very likely a laying queen. A few dead bees on the landing board after winter are normal; a heap of them, or brown streaks of dysentery down the front of the hive, is worth noting for when you open it.

Before you open

Have what you might need at hand, so the hive is not left open while you fetch it: fondant or syrup, a spare frame of drawn comb if you have one, a clean floor if yours is the removable kind, and something to write on or record with. Know what you are looking for before you light the smoker, and plan to have the roof back on within about ten minutes.

The five things to check

1. A laying queen. Eggs standing in cells, one to a cell, and young larvae mean she has been laying in the last few days. You do not need to see her.
2. Brood. How many frames, and the pattern: a compact oval of capped brood is healthy, a scattered pattern can mean a failing queen or disease, and domed cappings on worker cells mean drones from a drone-laying queen or laying workers.
3. Stores. How much honey and pollen is left. Early spring is when colonies starve, because brood rearing multiplies what they eat just as the winter stores run out.
4. Bees. How many frames the bees cover. This is the number to write down: it is the colony's strength, and the baseline every later inspection is read against.
5. Disease. Chalkbrood mummies, dysentery, bees with deformed wings, and above all sunken, perforated or greasy cappings, which need a closer look for foulbrood. American foulbrood is a notifiable disease in many countries.

What to do about what you find

• Low stores. Feed straight away: fondant while the nights are still cold, 1:1 syrup once the weather is reliably warm. Sugar syrup for bees covers the mix.
• No eggs and no young brood. Look again in a week, in case the queen has only just started. If there are still none, combine the bees with a queenright colony or give them a frame of eggs from another hive.
• A small colony. Reduce its space with a dummy board and narrow the entrance, so it can keep its brood warm.
• A dead colony. Close the hive so other bees cannot rob it, and work out why. Bees head-first in the cells with no stores nearby means starvation; a small cluster beside full frames means it was too small to move to them; white mite droppings on the cell walls point to varroa. Anything that looks like foulbrood is reported before the comb goes anywhere.

Count the mites

Spring mite counts are small in number and large in consequence, because every mite has a whole season of brood to breed in. An alcohol wash or sugar roll now tells you whether a colony needs attention before the flow, and the threshold in spring is lower than in late summer. The varroa treatment guide covers what to do with the number.

From here to swarm season

Once drones are flying and the colony covers most of its box, the season changes pace. From then until the main flow, an inspection every seven to nine days catches queen cells before a swarm leaves, and following the same order every visit means nothing is missed; the hive inspection checklist lists the readings. Add space before the bees need it, not after.

Write the first inspection down hive by hive: frames of bees, frames of brood, stores and the queen. It is the row every later visit of the season is read against, and in BeehiveMind it is a spoken phrase per reading, recorded while your hands are still in the hive. What closed brood tells you explains why the brood figure in particular is worth having from the first day.