A beautiful day, eventually.

The weather was cloudy for most of the day, though it was warm.  Late in the afternoon, the clouds started to break up.  My peaches have been blooming and these pears are just about ready to burst into bloom.

After the sun started to break through the clouds, the peach trees were buzzing with bees.

This bee has a large sac of golden pollen on its hind leg to take back to the hive.

Of course, it's not just the plants that we cultivate that provide forage for the bees.  The dandelions are in their full bloom and provide a significant source of nectar and pollen for the bees.  For being a weed, dandelions really are pretty at this stage.

You can see here the orange pollen this bee has been gathering from the dandelions it visits.

I opened my beehives this afternoon, after the sun came out and the bees were actively foraging, for another inspection, now three weeks after installing the packages of bees.  The population of bees is clearly increasing, and there is now lots of capped brood on the frames, so the population will probably explode in the next couple of weeks.  You can see here that the bees have been building some extra comb on the bottom of the frame and had built a little along the top bar as well.  I had to scrape all of that off.

Here you can clearing see the capped brood -- the tan colored areas where the bees have covered over cells where larva are going through the final stage of metamorphosis into bees.  You can also see pollen stores along the top of the frame.

Here is more capped brood, with nectar and pollen stores along the top frame to the left.

Another frame with capped brood.  I believe if you look close, you can see some larva in the bottom of open cells at the top.

Here is brood not yet capped.  Small larva are just barely visible curled up in the middle cells.

A little more of a close-up so the larva curled in the bottom of cells is a little more visible.

The bees had drawn out comb on all but a couple of the frames in the first box so I added a second box to each hive to give them more room to make comb.  They had also emptied the sugar water from the top feeders in each hive and I added a half gallon to each, which is all that I had brought.  I will need to add more in a couple of days.