First Inspection

After nearly a week of waiting, on Sunday we were finally able to go back into our newly-occupied hive and see how it was doing.  Apparently, everyone's healthy.  We saw that they were doing a good job drawing new honeycomb out on the blank frames.

Plus, there was lots of brood... cells with eggs, larvae & pupae.

And there was a ton of capped honey for the bees t eat too!  And some pollen-filled cells in an awesome bright orange.  We saw a few bees coming home with legs covered in orange pollen too.  It was amazing.

We gave them a bucket of sugar syrup to eat to help with their comb building, and left them to their work.  While I worked on some other stuff, Eric planted our new honeysuckle for them.

So far... being a beekeeper rocks.

The Residence has Residents!

Remember this post?  The beehive we built and I painted last June?  Well, it turned out to be too late in the season to get a strong bee colony going, so we had to wait until now... and this past Monday night... we got our bees!

We got a nuc, which consists of five frames of honeybees with drawn out honeycomb filled with various stages of brood and a laying queen.  In essence, the NUCleus of a hive!

Per instructions received from experienced beekeepers, we opened the door of the nuc and put it on the actual hive overnight.

And then Tuesday morning, we installed the bees into the hive!

Now we have the incredibly difficult task of leaving the hive alone until Sunday, when we can check on the bees and see how they're doing in there.  More photos will come!