7th Inspection

Today I found the upper deep fully drawn into comb and the empty cells filled with eggs so I guess the queen is OK although I haven't seen her in five weeks. Several frames also contained capped brood. The lower deep contains frames of capped brood as well as numerous empty cells where pupae have hatched. I couldn't tell if there were eggs or not in them as I couldn't get the sun over my shoulder--too shaded when I inspected. I really need to wear bifocals when I check out the frames, too. The medium super was full of bees but they haven't started drawing comb yet. All in all, things are good except one of the gals stung me in the left thumb.

6th Inspection

Took another look-see today and the ladies are doing wonderfully well. The top deep is nearly fully drawn into comb--8 of the 10 frames--and newly laid eggs, larvae and capped brood are evident. Everything looks good in the lower hive body as well. Numerous capped cells and visible larvae are present. I added the queen excluder and a honey super today even though I can't use the honey since I need wait until August 9th to pull the Apistan strips. The girls can use it for winter stores, though.

5th Inspection

Today's peek was to see if anything was happening in the upper hive body. Since last week four frames have been drawn into comb in the upper body and most of the empty cells were filled with eggs. I needed to remove some burr comb from the top of the frames and from between two frames. Apparently, I didn't have the frames pushed tightly together so there was too much space between them. I needed to really jam my hive tool between the upper and lower hive bodies and pry around the edges to get the two unstuck. I lifted the upper body off and the bees came boiling out of the lower body. Some swarmed over the sides and others flew in a bee cloud around me. I smoked them back into submission and examined the frames. The center frames contain empty cells where pupae have hatched. The others contain larvae and capped brood in a nice tight oval pattern. There was also quite a bit of burr comb on the top bars that I removed. The bees seemed agitated today so I didn't bother to take photos, and for the first time since hiving the bees in early June I was stung. One flew up my pants leg and nailed me on the inner thigh. Ouch. Bet that will happen again.

4th Inspection

On Monday, July 7th I opened up the hive to remove the menthol crystals which had been in place for two weeks. The ladies had glued down the aluminum foil but good with propolis so it took some scraping to get it all up. I also removed some burr comb from the top of two frames. Everything else looked good. Although I didn't see the queen, I still noticed new comb filled with eggs so she must be in there somewhere. The frames are now all fully drawn into comb, but nothing is happening in the upper deep yet.