Spring Hive Inspection Checklist: What to Look For on Your First Visit

The snow is gone, the willows are budding, and foragers are flying. Time for your first real look inside.

But what should you actually be checking? And more important than that — what do you do with what you find?

Here's the checklist I use every spring on my own hives here on the coast of British Columbia, in the order I work through it.

Before you open the hive

Stand back and watch the entrance for two minutes. You can learn a lot without lifting a single frame.

• Traffic — Steady stream of bees in and out, or just a trickle? Healthy spring colonies are busy.
• Pollen loads — Bees bringing in pollen is the best free sign that the queen is laying. No pollen coming in is worth paying attention to.
• Dead bees — A handful near the entrance is normal spring cleanup. A pile the size of a fist is not.
• Odor — If the hive smells foul before you even crack the lid, you're looking at a dead colony or disease. Don't open it near your other hives.

If traffic looks normal and pollen's coming in, things are probably fine inside. You still need to confirm, but the entrance read tells you whether you're about to do a routine inspection or a rescue mission.

The inspection: what to check

Work through these in order. You don't need to find the queen on every visit.

1. Population

How many frames of bees do you see? In early spring a healthy colony should cover at least 4 to 6 frames in a single deep. Fewer than 3 frames of bees means the colony is weak and may need combining with a stronger one.

2. Brood pattern

Pull a frame from the center of the brood nest and look at the capped brood.

• Good — Solid, compact capped brood with very few empty cells. The queen is laying well.
• Spotty — Scattered caps with lots of gaps. Could mean a failing queen, disease, or hygienic behavior removing sick larvae. Note it and watch.
• No brood at all — The queen may be dead or not laying yet. Look for eggs (tiny white rods standing upright in cells). No eggs and no queen cells is a real problem.

3. Queen status

You don't need to find the queen every time. Look for evidence she's there:

• Eggs — If you see eggs, she was alive within the last three days. Good enough.
• Young larvae — Small white C-shaped larvae floating in royal jelly.
• Queen cells — Peanut-shaped cells on the bottom or face of frames. In spring this usually means swarming or supersedure. Note where you saw them and how many.

4. Stores

How much honey and pollen does the colony have?

• Honey — Lift the outer frames. If they feel light and the cells are empty, you're at risk. Spring is the most dangerous time for starvation because the colony is expanding fast and the nectar flows haven't really started.
• Pollen — Look for frames with colorful packed cells near the brood. Pollen is protein for raising brood. No pollen near the brood nest is a concern.

If stores are low, feed 1:1 sugar syrup that same day. Not next weekend. I've watched colonies disappear over a week of "I'll get to it" in late March.

5. Disease signs

Look for anything that doesn't look right:

• Chalkbrood — White or gray mummified larvae on the bottom board or in cells.
• European Foulbrood (EFB) — Twisted, discolored larvae in uncapped cells. Sour smell.
• American Foulbrood (AFB) — Sunken, greasy caps with a foul smell. Do the rope test: poke a toothpick into a suspect cell. If it strings out in a ropy thread when you pull it back, stop the inspection and call your provincial bee inspector that day. AFB is the one disease where you don't improvise.
• Deformed Wing Virus (DWV) — Bees with shriveled, crumpled wings crawling on frames. A sign of high varroa loads.

6. Varroa

Spring is when varroa populations start climbing. If you didn't treat in fall or winter, do a mite count now.

• Alcohol wash or sugar roll — 300 bees from a brood frame. Count the mites.
• Threshold — More than 3 mites per 100 bees (9 per 300) means you treat.

Don't skip this. More managed colonies die from varroa than from anything else — more than tracheal mites, more than winter, more than queen failure. If you're going to cut corners somewhere, this isn't the place.

After the inspection: what to do next

Based on what you found, here's what to prioritize:

| What you found | Next action | When to recheck | |---|---|---| | Strong colony, good brood, good stores | Nothing — routine monitoring | 2 to 3 weeks | | Low stores | Feed 1:1 syrup that day | 5 to 7 days | | Spotty brood | Mark the frame. Watch for improvement | 10 to 14 days | | No eggs, no queen seen | Check for queen cells. Consider requeening | 5 to 7 days | | Queen cells present | Decide: split, remove cells, or let them supersede | 5 to 7 days | | High varroa count | Treat according to your method of choice | Per treatment protocol | | Signs of disease | Contact your provincial bee inspector | That day |

The hardest part: remembering it all

You just spent 20 minutes inside a hive. You saw eggs on frame 5, the outside frames felt light, and — wait — was that a queen cell on the bottom of frame 7?

Now multiply that by five, ten, twenty hives.

This is exactly the problem that led me to build HiveSignal. You log what you see and it tells you the next action and when to recheck. I built it because I couldn't hold it straight in my head past about four hives.

App, notebook, spreadsheet — doesn't matter. Just write it down before you move to the next hive. Your memory won't hold up across a full yard visit. Mine doesn't.

The three questions

Your first spring inspection is really about answering three things:

1. Is the queen laying? Look for eggs and the brood pattern.
2. Does the colony have enough food? Check honey and pollen stores.
3. Is anything wrong? Disease, varroa, queen cells.

If you can answer those three for every hive in your yard, you're ahead of most beekeepers I know.