Making Themselves Comfortable

We checked on the swarm yesterday to see how they're faring... and make sure they didn't just move on out for new digs, as swarms sometimes do when caught and hived.  Nope, they were still there, and the girls were working their little abdomens off!

Sorry some of the photos are so blurry - that's what happens when I had Eric the camera.  But if you look, you can see that on about 4 of the frames, both sides, the girls are building out comb, and if you look closely, you can see that there's a shiny liquid in several of the cells - royal jelly!  That means the queen's laying and there're eggs in those cells.  Soon... more bees!

Since they're doing so well, you can see in the last photo we switched the entrance reducer to the larger opening.  It's a little more space for them to defend, but it gives them more freedom to come and go and do their work.

On another happy note, we checked the three hives in our backyard, and look at this beautiful, beautiful honey!