Bee Checkng!!

Okay....it's not the best pose of my buddy...who's my bee expert!! But I was planning on taking more remote shots.. but as soon as we opened up the first hive I held the camera for the rest of the photos...so I had to post this one since I at least had my bee vest on!! These bees are super friendly as the following photos show... and I even pulled my very very first frame for inspection...and with no gloves!! Talk about a rush!!!

The first thing you do is remove an end frame... which typically won't have as many bees on it.. that way you can slide the frame from the center so you can access the middle frame...which typcially is where the queen is!!

Here we're starting to slide the frames over... slowly getting towards the middle frame!

Here's the middle frame pulled....and loaded with bees!!! It's such a strange feeling putting your fingers on the frame with soooo many bees around you!! But they don't even notice you're there!!!

Inspecting the frame....looking for the queen, drones, egges, etc...

This box wsa full of bees. So we took an empty one from the second tier which gave more room on the brood box.... and placed one of the frames filled with bees in the second tier....in hopes of encouraging the bees to expand.... which means more honey!!

Here you can see all the eggs.... after the queen lays the eggs and then feeds them the comb is covered with wax.... and when the bees hatch they'll chew their way out!!

Just to the left of the center you can see a queen bee!! You can tell the difference between her and the drones by how shiney the black hump is right before the head.... plus she's the largest bee. You can see the same humps on the drones, but note that it's not a shiney black....for it has hair on it... The sole purpose of the drone's is to provide the sperm for the queen.... so you don't want too many in a hive....for it's the worker bees that provide the honey!!