The hive inspection checklist.

Guide · 2 July 2026

How often, and when

During swarm season — roughly mid-April to mid-July in Belgium and the Netherlands — inspect every 7 days. The rhythm isn't arbitrary: a queen cell is capped around day eight after the egg is laid, and the old queen typically leaves with the swarm around capping. Seven days is the longest interval that still guarantees you see a charged queen cell before the swarm is gone.

Outside peak swarm season, every 10–14 days is enough while the colony is active. In early spring and autumn a colony needs opening only when there is a concrete question to answer, and in winter not at all — heft the hive from the back to judge stores instead.

Pick your moment: a mild day of at least 14 °C, little wind, no rain, ideally late morning or early afternoon when the foragers are out. Opening a hive in cold or stormy weather chills brood and buys you nothing.

The checklist

1. Evidence of the queen

You don't need to see her. Eggs are the proof: a single upright egg per cell means a queen was laying within the last three days. Hunting for the queen herself on every visit wastes time and risks rolling her between combs. No eggs and no young larvae is the finding that changes everything — recheck in a few days before acting.

2. Brood pattern

Look for all stages — eggs, larvae in glistening white c-shapes, capped worker brood — in a compact, consistent pattern. A scattered, shotgun pattern with many skipped cells suggests a failing queen or disease, and deserves a closer look rather than a shrug.

3. Stores

An arc of capped honey above the brood and pollen packed nearby is what you want to see. Colonies can starve in season, especially during a gap in the nectar flow between spring and summer blooms — strong colonies with lots of mouths to feed are the first to go. If combs feel light and nothing is flowering, feed.

4. Space

Does the queen have empty cells to lay in? Is there room to store incoming nectar? A nectar-bound brood nest drives swarming. During a flow, add supers before the bees need them — a strong colony can fill one in under a week.

5. Queen cells

Check the bottom edges and faces of the brood combs. Empty play cups are normal furniture; a charged cell — with a larva floating in royal jelly — means swarm preparations are underway and you have days, not weeks, to act. Cells in the middle of a comb face point to supersedure or emergency replacement rather than swarming, which calls for a different response: usually, leave them alone.

6. Disease and pest signs

Thirty seconds of deliberate looking, every time:

• Chalky white or grey mummies in cells or on the floor — chalkbrood.
• Bees with shrivelled, deformed wings — deformed wing virus, which means varroa. See the varroa guide.
• Sunken, greasy or perforated cappings, discoloured or twisted larvae, a foul smell — possible foulbrood. Don't diagnose alone: foulbrood is notifiable, so involve your local bee health inspector or association.
• Wasps or hornets working the entrance, wax moth tunnels in stored comb.

7. Temperament and behaviour

Calm on the comb, runny, or following you home? Note it. Temperament is partly weather and partly genetics — a colony that is consistently defensive across several inspections is a requeening candidate, but you only know "consistently" if you wrote it down.

What to record, and why

Memory is the weakest tool in the apiary. By the third hive, the details of the first have gone soft, and by next week they're fiction. Record, per hive: date, queen evidence, brood pattern, stores, space given or taken, queen cells seen and what you did, disease observations, temperament, and what needs doing next visit. That last one is the most valuable line in the note — next week's inspection starts with a plan instead of a puzzle.

Records also make the season legible after the fact: which colony built up fastest, which one made you wear gloves in June, which one never quite recovered from a queen change. Those patterns drive the real decisions — uniting, requeening, breeding — and they only exist on paper or in an app, never in memory.