Well, it was time to open the hive again and see what was going on. The first thing we noticed was this:
For one, that’s a lot of bees on the inside over. Secondly, they’re building comb on the cover. This might mean they’re running out of room and looking for places to build comb. When we took it out, sure enough, they’d pretty much filled that frame. Most of it is capped honey, and the rest is nectar that will soon be honey.
And other frames were even more full.
Today I had Brynnley helping me out. In the picture below, she’s using a hive tool, which is basically just a specially shaped prybar, perfect for lifting frames out of the box and prying the boxes apart. It’s also pretty effective at killing wasps when they’re distracted by honey.
In the next box down, started to see why they needed more room for honey. They’d filled what’s typically space for honey with brood.
All these beige hexagons are going to be new worker bees. The spaces are likely bees that have already hatched, and down at the end, you can see drone cells. Here’s a closer picture:
You can tell they’re drone cells because they’re slightly popped out compared to worker brood. That’s because drones are much larger.
Here’s a drone in the center, with a worker bees around it. There’s also a bee hatching right beside it.
That’s it for now.