Hive Inspection~

It's true~

I am completely fascinated with bees!

They are so amazing!

We did another hive inspection

and will be taking our feeders off this week.

The bees are busy, busy and it

looks like they are getting enough pollen at this point.

The key, as our beekeeper says, is

that they begin to make 'capped honey'.

This looks different from the capped brood,

and is identified mostly by color...

We'll continue to keep an eye on them every 2 weeks or so

as it is super dry

here, 

in case we need to supplement feed again.

Especially if we don't get some 

MUCH NEEDED RAIN!

Two weeks ago we did a 'mini' inspection.

And,

I got my first bee sting~

Minor.

Here's some photos of the bees at work :)

When we first opened the hive, we could see right away that
another super was necessary.  See all that comb and
 honey on top of the frames???

Jonathan pulled up a frame and you can see a good picture
 here of the capped brood (down on the right side)
and the capped honey, up on the upper left corner...

Check out all the capped honey on this frame~

And, when we pulled it up, the whole frame is pretty much HONEY
that they are capping off~
Of course we need to leave somewhere between 40-60 lbs. for them
to make it through the winter.
The rest, well, it will be ours~

So, here they are three supers high at this point.
These will probably be mostly brood (bee making) boxes,
the next ones will be the honey~
We can hardly wait!!