It is fine to doubt what you have done mate, some times a doubt can cause you to check again and find some thing you think you had done but not actually done it. How often have I seen something I intended to but got a mental interruption and did something else I couldn’t put a number to it.
Have a great Xmas Fred
Cheers
Thought I’d give rendering wax a go… the outcome, I’ve been banned from the kitchen 
Think I need to build myself a solar wax melter. Didn’t realise how energy intensive the process can be.
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That sounds like my friend @busso… 
He tried to clean some Flow frames in the dishwasher, and then spent hours trying to get the wax out of the machine. 
I think SWMBO was not very amused. 
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Yes pick a day when loved ones are away for a day or two, giving you time to clean up.
Certainly I do not recommend the dishwasher for cleaning Flowframes.
Merry Xmas DD
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Aww thanks for giving me a reason to show off my home made solar melter.
I have MKII in design stage using an old ss laundry sink.
Then this one will be redundant.
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I have some parts lying around with the intention to build one… but if your MKII is finished before mine, maybe I can skip my build and acquire said redundant model… need to check with the CFO first…
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3 weeks have past since my last inspection. Today I found the new colony queenless. 
All 10 frames only had honey and pollen with empty cells ready for eggs. But no eggs or larvae and very little capped brood. Pretty much like this…
I was very careful placing the frame with the queen back into the box last month. However, either I’ve squashed her at some point or she has died shortly thereafter. Due to the total absence of eggs and larvae, my thinking is the hive has been queenless for about 3 weeks. She would have left plenty of resources to rear a new queen as she’d been laying beautifully last inspection.
I did spot a handful of empty queen cups… 2 of which looked chewed out, the others looked like play cups and were not charged. Initially I thought they were swarm cells or play cups as they were on the bottom of the frames. But now thinking about it, I believe it was their attempt to make a queen. Fingers crossed, the new queen was on a mating flight during my inspection…
My original colony is still queenright, but as a precautionary measure I’ve swapped 2 frames with BIAS into the queenless hive. If they have failed to rear a mated queen, at least they have another chance now. I will inspect in a weeks time and report back.
I am glad I have two colonies 
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Thank you for the update, and I am sorry that things look challenging.
You did the right thing to give them a frame of brood. You may have a virgin or recently mated queen. They can take 3 weeks or more after emerging to start laying. The brood frames will help boost the remaining population and provide nurse bees for any new brood. If there is no queen, then the bees have another chance to make one. Great judgment on your part, giving the bees options, well done.
Might I suggest that you reduce the entrance to no more than 5cm and perhaps feed them unless they have huge stores? The entrance reduction will help as the population declines until a new queen starts laying. The feed will help encourage the bees that it is OK to let the queen lay. If your hive has more than 2 frames of honey, you may not need to feed. A frame of honey lasts a colony a week to 10 days in a dearth, so stores can go down quite fast.
Great learning experience for you, even if you might wish that it hadn’t happened. 
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Thanks Dawn, I’ll reduce the entrance as suggested. They have plenty of stores so I won’t feed at this stage (they have 3 flow frames full of honey, and the others partially filled. The brood frames are all arched full of honey and capped).
Population is still strong, hence I was taken back as I inspected each frame…
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Hi Fred. I’m in Perth too and been beekeeping for just three years. I like how you are documenting this. I think you are more advanced than me.
I think you are still in time for your queen to mate and start laying again before winter so I won’t stress too much. May I suggest you spend less time inspecting. I find that if I lift a couple of frames and find larvae and see they have the necessary stores I’m satisfied and close the hive. The more frames I take out and the longer I take, the more likely it is to kill the queen.
She might be mating with one of my drones 
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Hi @DarkEmu, I had to spend 90 minutes with a hive open the other day. That was just to put a honey super on a hive. I don’t know if we killed the queen or not. A simple 3 minute job turned into a 90 minute job because the owner didn’t use a hive mat. That resulted in comb being full built between the top of the frames & the roof & full of honey. The brood frames were badly placed with a large gap, as well as the hive was on a bad side angle. On top of that the bees which I sold the lady a few months earlier had developed a bit of attitude.
The bees were workable, however they didn’t take kindly to me pulling the brood frames out before cutting excess honey & drone comb off them, so I could evenly space them in the brood box once it was leveled.
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Cheers mate for sharing that. I don’t think that was the case with @fffffred above though but I haven’t read the full thread yet.
I would stress if that happened to me Jeff. It actually happened to me with my first hive as I was so inexperienced I mismanaged it badly. I now always aim to keep my inspections short by inspecting regularly or as necessary and make sure frame spacing is right etc etc… I really try to avoid long inspections mate as you’re increasing the chances of hive snafu. That’s my 2c, hope it helps Fred.
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This is what I did on the weekend with my original colony. I inspected 5 frames, saw and found what I needed, transferred and shut shop. This will be my regime going forward, unless I find something not quite right - which was the case for the new colony on the weekend. The next time I inspect, it will be the other 5 frames - my thinking now is that it will chase the queen into the other 5 frames and it will be safer for her because it’s left undisturbed.
Thanks, it’s more for my sake and record. If it wasn’t for my previous entry, I’d have lost track of when the last inspection was (some how I thought it was 4 weeks ago, but was actually 3 - makes a difference in determining extent of queenless-ness/ brood cycle etc)
Thanks for the tips.
I hope they have good genetics
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The best way to learn is by mistakes. Someone can tell you to evenly space frames & keep the hive level on the shortest side, however it’s not until you/we see the consequences of ignoring that advice that you/we start to take notice.
I think Fred’s doing a great job. You did say “I think you are more advanced than me” to Fred.
@fffffred, my advice would be to take as much time to do an inspection as you need. The first bit of advice I was given was to take your time, work from the rear of the hive. No bumping or doing anything that’s going to upset the bees.
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I agree with you there @JeffH, and I don’t regret the mistakes I made. You still point them out if you see them though.
I’m only a 3rd year beek and so far I’ve been through these phases:
-
The scared of bees phase. My first nuc was aggro. When I opened them up to transfer into my brood box they rounded me up and stung like there was no tomorrow. I only wore the “free” hat veil that Flow kindly slid into my 2015 Flow special edition supporter beehive order. They stung me so bad, they stopped buzzing and started laughing mate. My loving wife called me pincushion as she found it amusing. After that I was reluctant to inspect properly for a long while. As one would imagine.
-
The new found confidence phase. This was a great phase. I built up my confidence around bees and started to inspect properly, identifying eggs, larvae, brood, honey, nectar etc etc. I enjoyed it too much and my inspections started to take longer and longer, but not because it was necessary. I was just exploiting my confidence around bees, as I was properly suited up, and wanted to see every single cell on each side of the frame.
-
The informed newbie phase. I’m still a noob, and will be a noob for the next 20 years. This is the phase where I’m still learning a lot but at least I know what I’m doing. As much as I still want to spend time in the hive, my inspections are less frequent, and shorter. I can get a hint of what’s going on from the activity at the entrance.
I don’t know whether others had the same experience. Here in south WA I’ve always been told to keep inspections to the minimum. We are blessed with our situation of a relatively disease free state. I see you are in Queensland and of course that doesn’t apply.
Anyway, Fred is doing really fine and knows his bees from wasps.
Excellent Fred.
I encourage you to continue documenting here mate. Others like me can learn a lot. I do suggest however to also keep a proper record. I’d stay away from apps and fancy software. I simple spreadsheet on Google Sheets will do. Just record the important things with date etc. I prefer a physical old fashioned notebook - but I’m antiquated.
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I can only repeat what Jeff has said, take all the time you need for an inspection so that you are confident any issues have been taken care of and you know all is good till the next inspection. My mentor gave me the same advice as Jeff has given to you and I will only add to work slow and smooth, the bees will be calmer. I’ve seen more hives die out through people not taking the time to look closely doing an inspection or doing them without due care than any I might have heard of taking too long.
Sadly I had to kill the few hundred remaining bees in a hive yesterday after 3 days trying to save them that were starving to death and totally over run with SHB. Need I say it wasn’t my hive but one I got a phone call about. It was in a bush setting with heaps of trees in flower but as with elsewhere the flowers didn’t have any nectar. I gave the hive frames of nectar but the bees I guess were too weak to walk to it. From 5 to 8.000 bees and 3 days later down to a few hundred.
Even when you see subtle changes in the wrong direction aim at figuring out what is wrong as a hive can crash very fast.
Cheers Fred
We are lucky we don’t have SHB here.
As I’m still a noob, what are the diseases to watch out for here in Perth that can wipe out a colony in such a short time?
I’m aware you don’t have SHB or cane toads in WA yet. Maybe chalk brood is the biggest issue that can wipe out a hive in WA worth keeping an eye out for. But I look forward to hearing from those in WA as to what they think or as the major problems in hive health are there.
Cheers
I read more of this thread and I see this topic was already covered and there was a hot kerfuffle over this. I think in respect of the thread owner it is pointless discussing it again. I will leave it at there. I should have read the full thread before bringing this up and offering my suggestions. 
I don’t want to be the inspections police.
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