Pollen!

The excitement over the past few days has been seeing the bees come back to the hive with their back leg pollen baskets stuffed full of yellow, white, and orange pollen. I can't take a good picture of it, but I'll find another picture elsewhere and post it. It's really extraordinary.

The bees will turn this pollen into "bee bread" which I also have to read up on to remember exactly what it is-they feed it to the young but I don't remember at which stage.

Chris Kohl of Sweet Valkey Hives from whom we bought our hive says that bringing pollen in is a good sign that the hive is raising brood. We haven't seen the queen since she was in her cage and we probably won't open the hive up for a while to check for eggs, so we've got to take it on faith that she's in the huge cluster doing her thing.

If for some reason she's not in there, the workers may start laying eggs which is a bad sign. It means that the queen pheromone has been absent from the hive long enough that the worker ovaries have developed enough to lay. However, because the workers haven't mated, all the eggs they lay will be haploid, unfertilized drone eggs. Not helpful.

I am still planning to go back and post pictures and videos from the first few days, as well as from our several months (years!) of planning for the hive.

Day 8

Didn't do the math on how many dead bees there would be outside the hive each day. Frankly, it's kind of gross. As is the bee poop.

Day 6

I'm going to jump right in here, on Day 6, to report that we HAVE COMB! I spotted it this morning just before I left for work. As has been the case on the other cold mornings since the package was installed, the bees were in a big ball-shaped clump up at the top of the hive. We've been looking for the beginnings of drawn comb on the outer bars, but today the bees were moving around just enough in the middle of the cluster that they revealed a beautiful piece of comb right in the middle! They've obviously  been drawing it out for a couple of days. So cool! It's pure white with tiny cells. I'm relieved that the girls will now have something to store pollen and honey in....And hopefully the queen is in the middle of it all doing her thing.

My entomologist colleague, in response to my enthusiasm that they were drawing comb, remaked wrly, "Wow - they actually know what to do!".  Well of course they do...