First Peek

Took a first peek into my own hive today to ensure the queen was released and to get a feel for the overall health of the hive. The queen is out and probably under this cluster in the photo. All looks well to me.

The larger gap created by having the queen cage installed allowed for a nice view of the light cream wax combs being drawn out from the black foundations.

Also swapped out the screen used on the bottom board. I had initially placed two layers of 1/4" hardware cloth offset by half in an attempt to make 1/8" openings but as hardware cloth is not exactly square, some openings were of the desired size while others were either too small or too large. The bees quickly found the larger openings to be just large enough for to use as another entrance to the hive. After replacing the screen with one of the correct size, I could hear the ping, ping of the rebel bees against the metal hardware cloth as they still tried to use the "bottom door".