Hi All, newbee here based in the Albury-Wodonga area (NSW/VIC border in Australia). After a year of research (including stalking this forum), mentoring by a local beek and setting up my bee yard (including 1 x flow hive and 1 x standard hive), my son and I have purchased 2 colonies which arrived last night! Very excited, and very keen to continue our learning journey.
Cheers,
Trish
Hello and welcome to the Flow forum. Sounds like you have a superb start with 2 hives and local knowledge, well done. Let us know if we can help you with any additional advice or opinions - we have lots of those! 
Thanks @Dawn_SD! Very much looking forward to it.
So we opened the boxes last week to see how things looked (each colony came in a single 8- frame brood box with attached solid floor).
First hive had bees boiling out of every nook and cranny! Heaps of capped brood on every frame, larvae, eggs and lots of burr comb filled with nectar and honey. A couple of frames had broken and slipped down so the comb on the frames was also a bit rough. We tidied things up as best we could, lifted a couple of frames into a new box (thinking we might run with double brood boxes) and filled out both boxes with new foundation frames.
2nd box not as many bees and not as much burr comb. Got the ‘after’ shot as well as the ‘before’ for this one.
Bees were very well behaved despite our low skill level (I think they’re happy with the amount of pollen and nectar around - might have been a different story otherwise! ).
Isn’t it funny how weeding goes on the back burner when keeping bees. 
Weeding, mulching, fixing fences, worming sheep…
