Hive Inspections?

[harvey]

Hello all and I want to say thanks for all the information yall have already given me.  New to bee's and kinda excited about them.  I only have one hive now but plan on at least one more next year. 

Question:   When I open the hive to inspect them or check on there progress what am I really looking for?   How Often should I open the hive?  Should I check each frame?   I have two deep brood boxes.  The first one had old drawn comb in it.  The second was all brand new with wood frames and wax covered plastic from Dadant.  I put two frames that were drawn up in the top box and two new frames in the bottom,  I read it here someplace.  The bee's seem happy and very busy.  i haven't looked in on them in week since adding the top box and told them I would give them two weeks for I did?   Last time I was in there I did see some of the cells were covered in what looks like burnt brown paper.  I don't mind looking but again not sure what I am looking for?

[Wynoochee_newbee_guy]

the best  advice I can give you is one get a hold of some books on beekeeping, second once a week inspections for your first year, and don't expect a honey harvest this year. you want to make sure you have a queen. You do this by looking for eggs larva and the queen herself. I buy marked queens just easy to find her. then you want to make sure there is a good brood pattern and food stores. any signs of mites or other problems that can affect the heath of your bees. I would caution you as to using used equiptment. diseases can be in the old foundation like AFB and those spores can live up to 70 years in the frams and foundation. so a word of caution on using used equitpment. and I try to never swap hive equiptment as well thats just me. and keep a record of you find each time you go and check on your girls.
best of luck

[Kathyp]

you want to look for the important stuff that will kill your hive.  do you have a queen?  you may not see her, but do you see eggs, or very young larvae at different stages of development.  do you have a good brood pattern and does the brood look healthy.  are they building up.  are they building out the hive.  do they have stores, or do you need to feed?  take pictures.  you can go back over the pictures and see if you missed anything.  you can post them on here when you have questions.  when i was starting out, i found so much more on the pictures than i saw when doing the inspection.

equipment:  don't get carried away.  as with any hobby, there are lots of neat and useless things to buy  :-).  i don't have a problem with used equipment.  when i get it, i clean it well, bleach dip it, and change any foundation.  in fact, frames are cheap and i often just change out the frames. 

swapping hive equipment:  if you have several hives, there will be cross contamination no matter what you do.  by contamination, i mean the transfer of material from one hive to another.  if you have a weak hive and need to pull a frame of brood from another, you will do it.  if you have a really sick hive, you will quarantine it and not use it as a donor hive.  i learned that the hard way when i swapped chalkbrood into another hive.

in all things...KISS and common sense  :-D

[Irwin]

Check this site out she has some great pic's of what thing's look like and what they are. http://beekeeperlinda.blogspot.com/ and this link http://forum.beemaster.com/index.php/board,95.0.html

[harvey]

Thanks Irwin that was a good site.  Harv