thanks to all for your insightful replies. As suspected, there does seem to
be rather more opinion than hard data but the consensus that beginners
should inspect frequently is gratifying. Great to get the Taber reference
(coincidentally I am awaiting delivery of a volume of his collected
articles).  In reading this, he showed an inspection cost of about a kg of
hive weight on the day of inspection but no difference in weight gain
between inspected and control colonies the next day.  So a fairly trivial
penalty especially for the hobbyist.

In doing a little further searching I came across this which I found
intriguing - "Experimentally induced predation threats modified behavior,
but the effect was opposite of our predictions: disturbed colonies showed
decreased aggression"  Rittschof, C. C. and Robinson, G. E. (2013),
Manipulation of colony environment modulates honey bee aggression and brain
gene expression. Genes, Brain and Behavior, 12: 802–811.
doi:10.1111/gbb.12087
It's a complex paper that I haven't fully digested, but it does suggest to
me that there may be some sort of habituation effect of inspection. I think
I have noticed that colonies that have not been inspected for months and
months are more defensive.

Cheers, Andrew
(Melbourne, Australia)

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