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.