Two weeks in

May 6th, 2007

My first real check of the hive. I got my suit on and my smoker lit and opened the hive.

The first thing that surprised me was honeycomb was being built in the gap inside the feeder and a little was on the inside of the lid. The bees were really busy!

I removed that comb for the burr bucket (removing it carefully to not injure any bees), and then removed the hive top feeder.

Wow, the inside was pretty busy. The first frame I removed was almost entirely empty (I was a little disappointed).

However, as I got closer to the center the frames got considerably heavier and more impressive:









I think that's capped brood in the middle, and even though I tried I never saw the queen.

I then put all the frames back in carefully, put the hive top feeder back in place and closed up the hive. It had been a really fun first look at the hive. It's like a super-cool ant farm.

As I continued to feed the bees I noticed that new comb was often built in the center gap of the feeder. I noticed that if you're new to this like me it was nice to have new comb that I could check for eggs. I figured that if I saw eggs in the new comb it meant the queen was still doing okay.

The next major milestone will be the second hive box.