Good morning everyone. I am interested to hear what the more experienced bee keepers on here do in regards to inspection freqnecy. How often is to much, how often is to little? I am relatively new and would love to be in my hives as much as possible but have kept it to once every 7-10 days.
First year, that or a bit less, like 7 to 14 will be fine. As you get experience, you will slow down to "when I have a purpose to open it". Meaning, I see a possible problem, it should need another box, the flights have slowed, ETC. Each year you keep, you will open each one less.
What Walley said.
I do inspections in the spring and fall to clean out any frames the bees do not like for some reason, sometimes it is an entire super. I inspect when I see a problem. I use screen bottom boards with trays and screen top boards. When there is a problem, the bees start dumping trash out of the hive into the trays. If the SHBs have taken over a box, the tray will bee full of SHB worms.
In the top I can see if the bees are thick or thin.
Strong hives have clean trays with just dropped pollen.
Jim