We opened up the hive again today. It’s been 2 weeks since we got the bees and it was sunny today so we wanted to see what they have been up to. Overall the bees were looking good. They hadn’t built quite as much comb as I expected, but then again I don’t know what I was basing my expectations on.

First we got the smoker ready. It smoked much better today with dry pine needles.

The bees had drunk most of their sugar water despite the dafodills being out.

We opened up the hive carefully again, but the bees didn’t seem to mind. Or else maybe I’m getting used to them as well.

They had built some burr comb on the top of the frames in the opening of the inner cover. I guess that sugar water just tasted sooo good they had to build a comb right there!

We ended up removing this comb; it is now sitting on the kitchen counter, the proud first product of ‘our girls’. I still find it amazing how white the comb is, and how light weight. Really a miracle of nature. Perhaps we should take some architecture lessons from the bees.

We examined every frame. They have built up the inner frames fairly well, but haven’t yet reached the outer edges, so still a few more weeks until they get the next box. Here are some of the frames we saw:

The most exciting part was seeing the queen. She’s in there and so are the larve so it should just be a matter of about 10 more days before we get new bees!