On June 13th (Friday, HA!) I opened up the hive for the first inspection. I wanted to check for three things: 1. Had the queen been released from her cage? 2. Was the queen laying eggs? 3. Were the workers drawing out comb onto the frames? I also got to fire up the smoker and put on my veil. Like hiving the bees, the 1st inspection is simple and straightforward. Light the smoker, blow smoke into the entrance and under the cover, and remove the covers. The bees were remarkably gentle and let me pull out all the frames and check them. The queen comes in a little cage that is plugged on one end with candy. Once the colony becomes used to her, workers eat away the candy plug and release here into the hive where she immediately begins laying eggs. My girls (virtually all the bees are female) released their queen and I noticed eggs in the drawn comb. One and a half frames were drawn into comb (the little hexagons) and there were also three large pieces of burr comb in the space the queen cage had been. I removed the burr comb, replaced the frame I removed to install the queen cage and closed everything up. So far so good.
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