I thought it might be useful to someone on the list if I shared a few of my own personal experiences with a Walter Kelley Observation Hive.  I'll start out by
first saying that there may be suggested and preferred ways of doing these
things, but instead of following those suggestions, I did it the "cheap" way.
As a matter of fact, the reason I bought the Kelley OH was that after looking
at the advertisements for observation hives in all the catalogs I had, I found
that the Kelley OH was the cheapest one I could find.  I couldn't afford to
spend more.  They come without glass, so you have to go to a glass place and
have the glass cut to the specifications they send you.  The glass (of course)
ended up being more expensive than I thought it would be, so in the end, the
overall cost of setting up the OH was close to the prices other places might
have charged for their OH's.  But I had already bought the Kelley OH so I was
committed by that time.  The cheap way to get it started is to take a frame of
brood with adhering bees (make sure there are some eggs or very young larvae on
the frame you select) and put it in the OH.  Some older field bees may leave to
return to their original hive.  Then let them raise their own queen.  The
population may drop, the queen may not be too good, but what do you want?  It's
an observation hive.  You don't want your most productive queen in a hive that
only has two or three frames.  Besides that, you get to watch them build their
queen cells and the various other activities that take place during this time.
You end up with a week colony...perfect for a small observation hive.  I ended
up getting two "supers" for my observation hive.  Actually I bought one and
then made the second super myself, patterning it after the first one.  For me,
that was the easiest and cheapest way to do it, and I was very pleased with
the results.  I suppose you could set it up with a frame from a swarming
colony that already had a sealed swarm queen cell or two on it and get even
quicker results.  It would probably only work well during the height of the
nectar flow.  Maybe I was just lucky, but another local beekeeper who had an
observation hive in his kitchen told me that was the way he did it and it
had worked for him every time.  One of the things that he told me he had to do
periodically, though, was when the OH got to be too populous, he would spray
the bees hanging outside the window (because they couldn't get into the hive)
with soapy water to kill them and help keep the population down.  I'm not
relating this as a recommendation--just as "information" about what one person
chose to do to solve his overpopulation problem with his observation hive.  I
did not have that problem nor use that (soapy) solution for my OH.  For my
second super, I used put in a frame with foundation so my small weak colony
would have plenty to do.  It was fun, educational and entertaining for me, my
family, and many visitors to our home.  Always a conversation piece, and my
"game" that I played over and over was "find the queen" (an unmarked queen).  I
probably spent hours playing that game.  Many times I could not find her, but
the more time I spent looking, the better I got at it.  That game sure helped
me later to find the queens in my regular full-sized hives because I had
already practiced it and gotten pretty good at it in my observation hive.  I
was satisfied with the results I obtained with my Walter Kelley observation
bee hive, and I made no modifications to it, but I have no alternative
experience to compare it to.  Best wishes for success.

Layne Westover
College Station, Texas, U.S.A.