So you have started your new bee colony from a package. On day one, you placed your queen cage and emptied your package of bees into the hive. The hive has been closed for about a week and it is now time to perform your first inspection. At this point you should also be able to observe a steady flow of bees to and from the hive entrance. So let’s open the hive up and see what is going on inside.
A first time beekeeper will probably grab the smoker and put on the full bee suit. And if this is what you are comfortable with then there is nothing wrong with that. However, I find that depending on your bees, this may not be necessary. At this point the bees will not yet have any brood to defend and will most likely not be very defensive of the hive. The first week of a new bee package is still a transition period for the bees and the inspection usually does not need any smoke. We are still very much in the honeymoon period with the bees.
Slowly open the hive, being careful not to aggressively pop or snap the top lid off the lower brood chamber. Look at the underside of the hive lid and make sure the queen is not on the lid. Take a look at the bees. Hopefully the approximate number of bees is relatively the same as one week prior.
Take care and remove the outer most frame furthest away from the center. There should not be any bees on this frame. Do a quick check for the queen and set the frame aside. Then carefully starting at the center frame, nudge the group of frames away into the empty space you created. This should allow you to remove and inspect the queen cage that was hung in the center of the box. The queen should have been freed. If not, remove the remaining candy plug and let her loose onto the top bar of the hive. she will quickly crawl down into the hive. Do all of this over the hive just in case you drop her she would fall into the hive.
If the queen already freed herself days ago then pull the center frame up carefully and look for the queen and look for freshly laid eggs. You should probably find that about 3-4 frames have newly drawn comb with eggs.
If you can find the queen, then that is great. If not, do not worry. As long as you see eggs, then you know she is there and is hard at work. It can be difficult to find the queen at this early stage because the colony is very bunched up and not yet fully organized. I got lucky with this colony because the package I received was a bit short on bees.
Carefully put all the frames back in the hive and close everything up. Make sure to move slowly and carefully. Because the hive is still not yet fully built out all the frames with comb, there will be layers of bees in clusters. Make sure not to crush anyone and move very slowly. Finally close everything up and open up the entrance board to the larger opening. The colony will very quickly be needing the larger entrance for all the forager traffic.