Quick Beehive Inspection – How To Inspect a Hive in Under 5 Minutes

In this video, I'm going to show you how to complete a full inspection of your colony of bees in under 5 minutes. Now, I said I'd do this video over winter, and I think a few people were surprised when I said that I'd get through a full colony inspection in under 5 minutes. In this video, I'm going to show you how I do that inspection, the things that I look out for, and more importantly, the things that I don't do. Now, the big caveat to say here is that not every single inspection is going to be less than 5 minutes. Because the standard inspection that I do, I'll go through all of the hive, go through all of the frames. I'm confident that the bees aren't swarming, but when you come across a colony that is swarming or that is trying to swarm and has swarm preps underway, then obviously things do take a little bit longer. So the average number is probably going to be higher than 5 minutes once you take into account all of those colonies that actually do have swarm preps underway. But if you park all of those and then do an average of how long it takes me to do an inspection, it's It's definitely under 5 minutes. I do it quickly, I don't dwell on the unnecessary, and I'm going to show you how I do it today. So I will give you a full unedited 5-minute inspection, no cuts. I'm not going to go into any detail on any of the frames because it's just going to slow me down and mean that I'm not going to be able to do that inspection under 5 minutes. So you will see today, warts and all, how I do my beekeeping inspections. But before we get to that, I'm just going to talk about some of the really key points to make sure that you're not dwelling on the unnecessary. So the first thing that I don't do is I don't actively look for the queen. That is just the surefire way to completely slow you down and bog you down during your inspections. Why do you need to see the queen? You definitely don't. I pull out the first frame. If I see eggs, I know the queen is somewhere in that colony. So you can generally tick off that first objective on the first frame, which is find some eggs. If I find eggs, I don't need to find the queen. What I do with the first frame as well, as you'll see later on in this video, I pull the first frame out, I'll have a look on that frame, see if I can find the queen. If the queen is not easily identifiable on that frame and I've seen eggs, I shake the bees off and I go and put that frame off to one side. What that does is it gives me the ability to work a little bit within the hive, and it means that I'm really reducing the risk of any damage by trying to cram all of the frames back into the hive each and every time. So my brood boxes are predominantly Sue Enti. They've got 10 frames within the brood box. So I'll take the first frame out, put that off to one side, and then I'll start from front to back and I'll work through the frames one by one. Now, if I do come across the queen, what I tend to do is I'll get a cage out of my pocket and I'll just cage the queen, just a push-in crown of thorns type cage, because then it means that I can be a little bit more rough with the frames of bees. And that's not to say that I'm kind of like smashing them around and squishing bees, but it means what I can do is I can shake off every single frame and it means I can identify what's going on on that frame a lot quicker. If you're going through every single frame and they are covered with bees, it's quite difficult to see if there's any swarm cells on there, Especially if you're looking at kind of like day 1 or day 2 old swarm cells with like 4 or 5-day-old larvae in there. It can be really, really easy to miss one of those, and it can be easy to miss quite a lot of those as well. So I do like to find the queen. Finding the queen gives you a bonus in terms of being able to shake off all of those frames, but it's 100% not a prerequisite. And if you're trying to find the queen every single time, then it will really, really slow you down. The next thing that rapidly speeds up your inspections is trying to work out why you're inspecting your colonies. Why are you there? What are you doing? For me, in the middle of the season, there's only one reason that I'm there, and that is to make sure there are no swarm cells. I know the bees have got food. First frame I pull out, I can see whether there's food on it. First frame I pull out, I can see whether there's eggs on it. While I'm inspecting the frames of brood, disease is obvious to me. When you kind of get into the habit of checking them regularly, you don't need to go into every single cell and kind of say, oh, is that something nasty? Is that something dodgy? They stand out like a sore thumb. So for me, I'm not actively looking for disease. I'm not inspecting every single frame and going into that huge amount of detail. I'm looking for swarm cells, and I know if there's something obvious going on in that colony, i.e., they haven't got enough food, or there's no eggs, or there's some disease present, that's going to just jump out at me without me actively looking for it. And I think freeing up your mind just to focus on a single thing Really, really does help you when it comes to speeding up your inspections. In the same way that when you're looking for a queen, you need to kind of focus on looking for a queen. And I get caught out on this sometimes. You're kind of going through a colony looking for a queen, maybe because you need to do a swarm manipulation, and you're looking for a queen and you're checking the brood and saying, wow, they've got a lot of pollen on them, or there's a lot of drones on that frame there, and it bogs down your memory, and it means actually finding that queen becomes really difficult. So you need this real tunnel vision when you're doing your inspections, which is I'm looking for swarm cells. That's it. I'm going to shake the bees off if I pin the queen down, looking for swarm cells. I'm going to put it all back together again, and then I'm going to move on to the next hive. So they're the main things. Tunnel vision. Work out what you're inspecting for. Don't worry about seeing the queen. You see eggs, everything's okay. The food situation, the disease situation, kind of let your mind just take that on board, and anything that's drastically wrong should jump out at you. So enough of me waffling on. I'll go over there now and I'll show you how I do my uncut 5-minute inspection. Right, so it's a beautiful summer's day, very busy colony. This one here is in fact actually on double brood. It's on a 14 by 12 box and a national deep box. I'm going to give you the full uncut version of the inspection that I'm going to do on this colony. No cuts, no edits. You will see how long it takes. You'll see exactly what I do. I'll try and talk you through it as I'm doing it, so you have to excuse if I don't get my words out. Let's get inside, do a full inspection on this double brood colony. So See how quick we can do it. Right, so although this is a double brood configuration, this is one of the supers where I put the box underneath just to give them additional space, and this colony is lacking a little bit behind, so there's really not much going on down here at all. Other than the bees starting to draw it out. There's no brood, there's no eggs, there's no queen. Okay, the queen might be down there, but I don't need to see the queen. So I'm just flashing through a few of these frames now. There's nothing in them for me to be worried about. As far as you're concerned for this video, that is just a box full of foundation and drawn comb. Nothing to see here. So I can put my original brood box back into position, and we can now treat this colony as a single brood inspection. So I'm going to start the inspection from now. Right, first thing I do, I always like to go in kind of like second or third frame, and I just want to lever the frames a little bit just to get that first one out. Always a bit careful on the first one because I'm always worried about squishing bees and squishing the queen. Once I get that first one out though, I'm very, very gentle pulling the frame out like this. Once you get the first one out, it's so much easier. And all I'm doing is I'm pulling it away like that, and I'm looking at the colony, looking all over, Checking to see if I can see the queen, but the first thing I'm looking for is any swarm cells. Can't see anything really on here. Couple of play cups, I'll just knock them down just to double-check there's no eggs in them. And happy, there's no eggs in them. I can't immediately see the queen on here. I'll give it a little bit of a longer look, but no, no queen. So what I'm going to do with this frame is I'm going to shake the bees off. The reason I do that is if the queen is on that frame, And I put her down by the side there. I don't want her crawling off somewhere else. Now what I do is I start from the back and I work to the front. So I'm levering my frames like this, condensing them all up, knowing that these outside frames are likely just to be honey. Nothing to see in here. So that is just a frame of honey and a frame of stores and some pollen. That's the first frame done. Pulling out the second frame like that. Again, not fussed about looking for the queen. And there we go, I've identified eggs on this frame. So eggs are good, we're all good to go. Definitely no swarm cells on there. What I'm doing as I pull them back, I'm making sure that all of the cells— all of the frames, sorry— are in the correct position, correctly up against each other. And then again, I'm just looking here. I can see eggs, can't see any cells. Looking underneath, I've got a play cup there. Just get my tool. Nothing in the play cup. We're all good to go. That's going back in as well. Always making sure they're nice and connected to each other, because otherwise I'm going to squish bees or I have to go back and do it at the end. Pulling out the next frame now. This is a national deep frame that's turned into a 14 by 12, been like that for a while. These ones can be sometimes a little bit more difficult to see, and I'm always— There we go, that's the first time I've got the words wrong. I'm always looking at the bottom of the frame like that just to double-check That's where they're most likely to put the swarm cells. Nothing in that one, still can't see the queen. Always a bit more careful putting those ones back in, make it nice and tight. And then I find once you move through, you really don't even need your hive tool for a lot of it. It's easy to get them out. Again, nothing to see on that frame there. Just flipping it round, focusing on that edge, that's where they're most likely to be. Now, if I saw the queen at any point, I would have caged the queen and I would have started shaking off bees, but I've still not found the queen yet. I'm just putting them back in like that. And again, can't see anything on this frame. Still haven't found the queen. Still see eggs on this one. No sign of any swarm cells. So let's imagine that I put the queen down somewhere else. What I would be doing now is I'd be lifting the frame up to about there. And I'll just be shaking off the majority of the bees, and then it's so much easier to look, and I can say really easily, very quickly, there's nothing on that frame. You can see how much quicker the inspection was once you shake off the bees, and you can actually do that even without finding the queen. The queen will just fly off if you do that, as in she'll just fly back into the hive if you do it down like that. Got a couple of play cups here. I like to rest the corner on there if I'm looking inside play cups. Nothing in those. Another one on this side here. Nothing in that. That's fine. And we're on to the last frame now. So last frame's almost certainly just going to be stores. And again, it is. That's all stores in there. So then what I like to do is I like to put them all back into the correct position. I generally go third one in, so I'm pushing them back like that. Take my final frame. I always shake any remaining bees off that frame. Put it back in exactly the same configuration, and then I can put everything back together again. And that's the inspection complete. I have no idea how long that was, probably a little bit longer than if I was doing it without talking to you. I spoke to you the whole way through that, but I reckon that was under 5 minutes. Simple as that. Mm-hmm. No swarm cells in sight, not a single swarm cell there. Couple of play cups, no eggs inside the play cups. I saw eggs, so I'm confident they're queen right. I didn't see the queen, not fussed about seeing the queen. You could see from some of the frames there was a good amount of stores in there, so I'm not worried about stores. Lovely frames of brood, no worries about any disease. That's how I do my 5-minute inspection. If you're at the time of the year where you're putting your foundation in now, completely random, not connected to this video, check out this video here which shows you really when I think is the best time to put foundation into a colony, especially the brood nest, to limit the amount of drone brood that's created.