"as a practice I try to remind new beekeeper to 'have a specific purpose' in mind when they go into a hive. do that and then close the hive up.... the potential for doing harm is just too great if you linger in opening and closing a hive and generally there is no benefit is disassembling an entire hive. for myself quite often an inspection is > I open up the box approximate to the brood area, I remove and casually inspect one frame and then I close the hive up. generally data collect in the process like total population and weight of the hive are things I look for but monitor without really dwelling on those detail."
words of wisdom by tecumseh. specific purpose, data collection.
learn to 'read the frames', that is your data collection, this is what you will learn from even though you might not know or understand what you are looking at.
learn to read your frames, learn to read what's on the frames........what is normal, what is not, observe your bees, are they happy, are they cranky, are they bringing in pollen and nectar, is the queen laying, and laying properly, whatever happens in a hive WILL be evident by looking at and learning to read the frames. this will tell you a great deal about what to do or not to do.
every time you open the hive, look at the frames, what do you see? even if you don't understand what you are seeing, take note of it, ask here, read, do whatever it is you do to learn to read the frames. once we get a handle on what we should be seeing, we can begin to understand or make decisions about what to do or not to do, and as tecumseh said, our purpose for being in there.
hope this makes sense tbone.........