Second Inspection

Checked the hive this afternoon. The day was warm, humid and sunny with just a slight breeze. I had on a new white one-piece coverall utility suit that worked real fine as a beekeeping suit.

Smoked the girls, took off the cover and feeder, smoked again and peaked inside to see how things are going. The center three frames are full of eggs, larva and capped brood with nectar and honey above as in the picture here. Three more frames are nearly full with nectar and pollen with the outer four frames just starting to have drawn comb. I did have a bit of burr comb to remove from a spot on the frame and from the underside of the feeder.

This was also my first experience letting a bee crawl up from the hive onto my hand. A gentle urging with my finger turned her around and back into the hive she went. I applied the wiggling finger a few times to move a bee out of the way and enjoyed the gentle contact with them.

I did notice that the left side of the hive has more frames with drawn comb than the right side. Could that be due to the one side getting the late day sun where as the other doesn't? Because of this imbalance I did move the outer most empty frame from the right side of the hive to the left to give the girls a chance to work on it, added more sugar water to the feeder and closed up the hive.

Here is a nice picture of my pretty, dark Russian queen (She is marked by the white dot on her back.) I am so proud of how well she is doing!

Overall, I am very pleased with the progress of the hive and will probably be ready to add on the second super next week. While I am very comfortable with the amount of girls currently in the hive, I can't wait to see the expanded population next week as some are due to hatch any day now!