Only about 2-3mm. Very tiny gap. It’ll squash them if I do drop it
The gap under the bottom of the frames tp the floor of the base board is 6 to 8 mm. with what you have I would remove the brood box from the base board and use a glue to put an extra piece of wood onto the raisers on the base board. Don’t forget to paint it so it won’t absorb rain water. Measure twice (at least twice) and cut once’ as you glue each piece you could use thin short nails to hold them in place. That will give you the correct bee gap.
Cheers
Good morning 
I found this article:
And here’s some important points from it:
-
Population
1.a. abundance of bee
1.b. may have trend of heavy traffic in the morning and less in the afternoon.
1.c. usually have bees hanging on the tops of the frames or they will be well packed between them.
1.d. brood comb should be well covered with nurse bees.
1.e. There should also be bees stationed in the honey supers, guarding in significantly less numbers. -
Pollen
2.a. When you see incoming pollen (at the entrance), it means conditions are favorable for your bees and they are strong enough to take advantage of it. -
Brood pattern
3.a. A strong brood pattern is indicated by large swaths of brood that are similar in age, solid patterns.
3…b. A “shotgun” pattern and it is a symptom of a struggling colony. -
Healthy larvae
4.a. They should be pearly white and curled in a “C” shape. Discolored, twisted, melted or malformed looking larvae are signs of brood disease or parasites.
4.b. When the larvae is very young, it will float in a pool of royal jelly. The more generous the pool of royal jelly, the healthier the colony.
4.c. Dry looking larvae are suffering from malnutrition and are indication of colony stress.
4.d. larvae cannibalizing can happen if the colony is struggling -
Well maintained combs
5.a. moths and beetles move in and begin to destroy combs and at the same time grow their population. -
Honey
6.a. Although an abundance of honey is a good sign, it isn’t proof of a strong colony.
6.b. The timing of judging the honey amount is important -
Survival
7.a. Strong colonies will go into winter with more bees, honey and pollen than other colonies and often come out the other side with these advantages.
7.b. It’s easier if you have another colony to compare with. So either have more than one or compare with another bee keeper’s.
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Ok. Here’s day 7.
I took some photos today.
There are 6 frames still. My empty frames are arriving tomorrow. So I’ll add them as soon as I get them.
The the hives look similar. Out of the 6 frames in each hive, I’d say 4 of them are pretty packed with worker bees during noon time, 2 frames are heavy and I can see eggs, larvae, capped brood and emerging bees.
Is this considered healthy? Strong?
It’s 28′C now at 9 pm. Two hives are crowded at the front…
No gloves or protection, nice.
Frames look ok, bit light on brood but not too bad.
Are they swarm cells at the bottom of the frame on pics 1&3. Definitely queen cells anyway. May want to check them.
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I handled big dogs before… kinda feels the same when handing bees. But 1000 times scarier the first time last week. 
I will definitely check that again tomorrow. I was too busy trying to guesstimate how many percentage of the comb is filled with brood. I saw the queen too.
If that’s a swarm cell, what should I do? 
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Dawn to the rescue! 
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Two good articles for you. One on identifying swarm cells, and the other on what to do if you find them. They are quite large documents, so depending on your internet speed, you may need to be patient while they download:
http://www.wbka.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/wbka-booklet-english-PDF.pdf
http://www.wbka.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Swarm-Control-Wally-Shaw.pdf
The short answer is usually you would do a split, as described on pages 17 and 18 onwards in the second document. However, as your hives are new and still growing, I would hesitate to do that. I would check carefully for a queen first. If you see her and she looks a good size, I would destroy all cells except for the one with the biggest grub in it that is still open. My reason is that the bees may be trying to supersede the queen for poor laying or some other health issue. If they only get one queen hatching, they are less likely to swarm with the old queen. Other people may have better ideas though.
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Haha. Thanks guys.
It’s really strange. I had been reading and letting the idea of bee keeping swarm in my head for the past one year prior to getting the actual hive. I thought I read and watched enough. When the rubber hit the road, I suddenly forgot about absolutely everything.
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We truly all do that. This only makes my fourth year, but every time I get out of the hive. I remember I should’ve done or documented something more. There are many ways to mitigate everything and every situation is a little different. The biggest thing I remember from this forum is if you ask five beekeepers something you’ll get at least eight different responses in each. Very adamant that there’s is the only solution. You need to decide what is the best solution for yourself.
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I am never adamant, Marty, I am just right all of the time!!! 
Only joking. Bees and other beekeepers teach me new things all the time, and I love to learn new stuff. There is always a better way of doing things, and I am happy to hear about it from others. 
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You have always provided me some good information.
Just wanting this young man to realize he’s going to get multiple suggestions and some of the suggestions will feel like he’s doing it wrong, if he’s doing it any other way. Just wanting him to realize up front that he needs to learn his way. It took me a bit to get that off of this and other forms
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I agree with @Dawn_SD about the queen cell management and good that @skeggley noticed the cells. When I find queen cells I always leave one in case the present queen is failing but also sometimes the bees are only making ‘play queen cells’ and nothing comes of them.
I really enjoy it when I don’t have to wear gloves, jobs go smoother and faster. Good photos and info about them is valuable info for us.
Cheers
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Wow. That was some great reading material. Thanks heaps.
I had a check on the hive with the queen cell. This is what it looks like.
It looks a bit small, only about a worker bees length. And it’s not sealed. I had a look inside and it’s empty.
In the hive, this is what the frames contain:
Hopefully it makes sense. 
Thanks guys.
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Nice photos @Anton, and lovely diagram too.
If the queen cells are empty, either it is too late to do anything, or the bees are just playing and aren’t serious about swarming. The crowding on the front of the hive is very likely bearding from the heat. I think I would also be hanging out in the fresh air if the weather was 29C. 
Your frames are in a slightly odd order. I would try to put all of the frames of brood next to each other, to decrease the work load for the nurse bees. They have to heat and feed uncapped brood, heat capped brood, and help new bees emerge from their cells when they are ready. This is much easier if all of the brood frames are side-by-side. The empty cells could go on the outside of the brood nest, and the foundation frames outside that.
Nice job on giving us the information we need to help you, thank you. 
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Wow. Thanks heaps @Dawn_SD 
I have a feeling it’s just a “play” QC. The current queen is still very productive. All the frames were empty frames when they arrived, so the workers might think the queen was not productive. Or they could just be threatening the queen. Haha
Thanks Dawn for extra queen bee cell/ swarming links
I’ve cut n pasted this for future reference
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