Queen Bee

We found our beautiful queen today. She is right in the middle of the picture below.



And blurry here

We did our first inspection today looking for eggs and the queen. We did not find any eggs - but they may be there, they are 0.4 mm x 1.7 mm, with the narrowest end pointed up. It's hard to see something so small with a veil on. The next time we do an inspection there should be larvae, which will be much easier to see. I couldn't believe how much they had built in just 8 days.

Looking for eggs


This is burr comb - where they have decided to make comb wherever they want instead of on the frames which already have a honeycombed pattern. The pattern is to encourage them to build on the frame. I'm not sure yet why burr comb is so bad, but the book says it is, so I removed all of it.


Here is the burr comb, it's gorgeous. They have begun to collect the sugar water we've fed them and put it into the cells. We definitely already ate all that was in the burr comb, tastes like honey! It's much lighter weight than you would expect by looking at it.


They build the cells so that they are opposite each other, three cells on the opposite side intersect in the middle of one cell on the other side. It's kind of hard to explain, but they have built the comb so that it is as strong as it can be. How they do this in a dark hive I have no idea. You can sort of see what I am saying here:

Here is a picture of what the drawn out comb should look like. There is also a drone in this picture, that is what we mistakenly thought was the queen last time. They are fun because they don't have stingers, so if you find one you can handle it without worrying about being stung.


That's it for Beekeeping 101 today. We will be doing weekly inspections for the next month or two and each time there should be new and exciting things happening!