Another inspection of the north two hives to see how they are doing. The bees had built comb between the top two boxes and filled it with honey, so when I pull the boxes off and scrape off the comb it leaves some honey pooled on top of the frames. Here you can see the bees eagerly lining up shoulder to shoulder (do bees have shoulders?) to lap up the exposed honey.
Lots of capped brood in the north hive.
This frame has some pollen around the outside edges (the orange color) and some brood in the middle. You can see my new hives stand in the back waiting for future expansion.
Here is a frame with pollen on the bottom (actually that's the top of the frame as I am holding it upside down) and there are some queen cells along the top -- the peanut shaped cells. This means that the hive is preparing to swarm and replace their queen. This is an "old" queen entering her third year so I am not too upset about replacing her.
Here is a frame full of orange pollen from the bottom box of the north hive.
Here is a nice frame of capped brood from the middle box. All of the hives seem to be doing well, though I only got into two of them today.
I have added honey supers to each hive. Each hive has three boxes on the bottom for brood, and then boxes above that are for honey, called honey "supers" by beekeepers. The two far hives have one honey super and the near hive actually has three supers on it at this point. Obviously the near hive (my North hive) is the strongest most active one, but its also the hive that is preparing to swarm.
