Spring

Spring is when the colony wakes up, and your job is mostly to check that it woke up correctly. The first inspection of the year waits for a mild, calm, dry day above about thirteen degrees, since colder chills brood faster than the cluster can recover; on that visit you look for a laying queen, healthy brood, and stores that survived what was often the hungriest stretch of the year.

From there the colony builds fast, and your task shifts to staying ahead of it rather than reacting to it: once the existing box is roughly seventy to eighty percent full of bees and stores, add a super before the main flow gets going, not after.