I did a search and found one short post that discussed this a bit a couple years ago - there maybe others I didn't find in my search.
How often do you do a generic inspection down to the bottom hive body?
New beekeeper with 2 hives. We have 2 shallow supers on top of 2 standard hive bodies on one hive now and I haven't been down to the bottom hive body for about a month because all seems o.k., but wondering when I need to break down and start dismantling to see what is going down below. How often to even check below the supers?
Have only one super on the 2nd hive (lazy hive, but have seen eggs and larvae 2 weeks ago and nearly filled 2nd hive body with a good bit of nectar and some brood). Going to put a queen excluder under this super if I have some comb drawn out in the super this weekend. Wondering if I even need to check either of the hive bodies.
Hate to disturb the gals if I don't need to (although it is interesting of course). Seems pretty disruptive to go all the way down to bottom hive body to look around.
almost would like to make this a poll.
How many go to bottom hive body (assuming nothing looks horribly wrong up above):
weekly,
once every 2 weeks,
once every 3 weeks
once every month
once every 6 weeks
once a summer
It depends on time of year and your particular location. In the springtime, probably once every 1-2 weeks, In the summer not as often, probably once every 3 weeks. Once I know that swarm season is basically over, I relax with it and do not check as often.
After my first summer (which I needed to have a decent starting learning curve) I backed off and only go deep in the spring or if I notice something may be wrong. A lot of crawling bees, a bad (other than goldenrod nectar) smell, twitching, jittery, oily looking bees, a lot of dead brood on ground and other visual cues that may suggest I get my butt in there and see what may be wrong. Otherwise I let them do their thing. Hope this helps a little.
I didn't get into the bottom brood box more than a couple times after I put on a second brood box. This does set them back and they have to play catch-up, but the first year is very important for learning. It is a balancing act.