Bee progress

Multi-use comb
Originally uploaded by Beaver w/ a Toothbrush

We opened the hive to check the bees' progress a few weeks ago.

The main thing we were looking for was brood. If there wasn't any brood then the hive would die out.

We were happy to find quite a bit of brood. At least two of the forms are shown in this picture: larva and capped brood.

The center of the picture shows capped brood. This is the oldest brood. The bees in them are in the pupa stage and will be the first to emerge.

The next oldest surround the center. They are in the larva stage and look small worms coiled inside the cells.

There are probably also eggs in some of the cells but they are hard to see because they are so small.

The empty holes in the capped area may be from bees that have already emerged. If they have, the nursery bees will clean out the cells so the queen can lay new eggs in them.

In the upper left corner of this picture there is capped honey. Honey cells that haven't been capped yet are below that.

Mature bees that are halfway in some of the cells could be feeding larvae, storing pollen or honey, taking pollen or honey, or cleaning the cell.

These pictures were taken about two and half weeks after we put the bees in the new hive. They built up all the comb on multiple frames and were raising a big batch of brood.