Swarm Cells

Preventing (and utilizing) swarms is a BIG topic, one that is probably best explored through conversations with local beekeepers.
Having said that: one very small but practical aspect of monitoring the swarm impulse in your hive is to watch for swarm cells (also called "Queen cups") on frames in your brood boxes. The cup shaped cells on the bottom of this frame indicate that my bees are thinking about raising another queen to take over in the existing colony, after a bunch of the bees take off with the older queen in a swarm event.
I've heard that some beekeepers will scrape these cells off; my personal inclination is to let the bees do their thing but try to encourage them to stick around by giving them more space to expand in to (by 'checkerboarding' blank and brood frames, adding an extra brood box, etc.) and, as a backup, leaving an extra Western in my yard scented with lemongrass oil. Lemongrass oil (and the smell of wax, if you have drawn comb) can entice a swarm to move into this kind of 'swarm trap.'
Remember: swarms aren't bad! Except maybe for you... (and your neighbor, if they don't like bees). Swarming is the honeybee's natural method of propagation. I've heard it described as "the ultimate act of self-sacrifice": the queen and a retinue of workers leave behind a healthy, functional home to head out into the great blue yonder and try their luck. Feral colonies of bees that survive are often- by default- varroa-resistant, and provide a useful asset to the honeybee gene pool.

Hydration

It took me two rounds of LCBA Bee School to realize that yes, it probably was a very good idea to provide a water source for my bees. I copied the simple design recommended by Morris: putting out a shallow pan with some rocks in it for the bees to stand on.
I put it right next to my hive on an upturned two-gallon pot. Couldn't be any easier, and the bees have been all over it!

Successful Smoking

The first step in my hive check process is to get my smoker fuel well-prepared and lit: few things are as frustrating as cracking the hive open and then finding that your smoker has gone out. People use all kinds of materials for smoker fuel: cotton, cardboard roles, pellets of compressed wood, etc. The combination that works well for me is a slip of burlap, lit and dropped into a 'nest' of ponderosa pine needles. If I'm going to do a thorough hive inspection, I'll fill my smoker all the way up with pine needles to ensure it'll stay lit through the whole process.
Use the smoke judiciously: three or four puffs of 'cool' smoke (i.e. no sparks!) through the hive entrance as you begin, then three or four more puffs per hive body as you work your way through the boxes.
With some gentle smoke, the bees will start gorging themselves on honey- you'll see a bunch of workers with their heads stuffed into a honey cell. The evolutionary mechanism at work here is that the smoking mimics a wildfire, compelling the bees to load up on honey to transfer to a new home if the fire approaches a hive's tree.

Spring Management: Supplemental Feeding

After dropping way down over the winter, the bee population in a hive starts to build up again quickly in the spring as days grow longer and warmer. The hive entity, of course, wants to be at full strength when the major nectar flows come on in May-July.
March is a critical month to keep a close watch on your hive to ensure that the bees don't starve- I'm told that hives may eat as much in a month in the early spring as they did over the 3-4 winter months combined- lots of new mouths to feed!
People use all kinds of sugar sources to feed their bees: sugar syrup, candy canes, "fondant." I use a sugar syrup solution (1:1 sugar:water) in a 'Boardman Feeder' pictured here. While my initial inclination was to make the syrup using honey (as in this picture), I have since learned that simply using white, granulated sugar is easier on the bees because it more closely mimics a nectar that they would naturally prefer.
Making honey, after all, is the bee's strategy to preserve nectar- not a method of converting it into a preferred form of carbohydrates. It's also worth noting (for those of us who try to avoid processed sugar) that the bees are not converting your sugar syrup into honey that you're going to eat- it's just keeping them going during the nectar dearth in the early spring.

Emerging Worker Bee

Caught this bee in the act of chewing her way through the wax capping on her cell. Workers emerge on Day 21; queens emerge at Day 16 and drones on Day 24.
Notice the adult worker bee gorging on honey, the result of my smoking the hive before going in.

Brood Pattern

The queen in my hive is approximately two years old- a time when the queen's productivity will often begin to drop off. I spoke with a friend yesterday who's queen had started laying only drones; another sign of an aging queen is poor brood pattern (patchy).
My plan was to replace the queen this year by letting the workers raise a new one from a 'queen cup' during swarm season, but I was pleasantly surprised by the solid brood pattern I saw on a number of frames today. I'll need to check with Chip about whether to let her stay in charge for another season!
This photo shows a very solid brood pattern on a frame in box 2- notice the larvae in the uncapped cells. The arc pattern of the brood (w/ some honey cells at upper right) is typical.

Spring Management: Reversing Hive Boxes

I overwintered my hive with three western supers this year; many people will use two deep supers but I just use westerns in my backyard hive so I go with three to provide adequate space and honey stores for the colony (westerns are shallower than deeps, so the bees have less space on the frames- hence the extra box).
During my last hive check, it was apparent that the bees had all moved up into the top two boxes after eating all the honey out of 'Box 1,' the bottom box. Bees have a natural tendency to move upwards, and the queen is apparently reluctant to move back down into lower boxes even if the upper boxes are getting crowded.
So, today I went in and moved Box 1 up to the top position; essentially rotating the boxes (Box 1 moves to Box 3 position, 3 moves to 2, 2 moves to 1). The queen now has a full box of frames with fully drawn comb to start laying in.
I also added a boardman feeder with a dose of Nosevit- more on that later.

Moldy Pollen

On my first hive check of the season (February 19th), I noticed a couple of pollen cells that had mold on them. There were maybe 35 total cells with the white mold on them, ALL of them out the outer side of the outmost frames in the honey/pollen frames that fed my bees through the winter.
Chip says, no problem- it happens with our wet winters here. The only concern would be chalkbrood, which begins on brood cells near the center of a super, which these were not.

Drone, up close

On sunny spring afternoons like yesterday's, I love pulling up a chair next to my backyard hive and watching the field force come home, bringing in the first pollen and nectar of the season. I'm told that experienced beekeepers are quite capable of discerning the source of pollen by it's color (in the context of the season). I'm not quite there yet...
Yesterday, there was a drone hanging out on the landing board- I grabbed some photos of the drone next to worker bees for a comparison of size, color, body shape etc. The drone is the big guy with the big dark eyes- almost 1/3rd larger than the workers, to my eye.
Note the worker on the bottom left, bringing in some golden-orange pollen in her 'pollen basket.'