Yesterday, our bee "mentor" (LeeAnn calls him her "bee buddy Bob") came over to show us how check on the progress of our queen development.
When we first set up our

hive, Bob had given us a few developed frames from his established hive to get us started. Since the queen stayed with his colony, our "girls" were now without a queen, and that's not a status they're content with. Not having a queen causes the colony to adjust their efforts so that they can start raising a new queen. Special attention and different activity occurs inside the hive which results in a queen cell (or cells) being developed. Our task today was to inspect the frames to indentify and check the progress of these cells.
Since we are still quite new to all this, Bob stepped us through a lot of things. First, we needed to get our smoker going. (The smoker is used to distract the bees so that we were less of a threat to them.) LeeAnn suited up with the full outfit: coveralls, gloves, hat & veil. She looks ready for action!

After quieting the bees with the smoker, LeeAnn lifted the lid and we had a look see. After less than a week in their new digs, the the girls were ha

rd at work, building out their comb. Learning how to handle the frames with all the equipment was a bit of a challenge at times, but Bob provided some great tips.
We inspected the frames and talked about some of the different things we saw. We found different colors of pollen, identified the drones (male bees), and sampled a bit of honey straight from the comb... or I should say, along
with the comb. Bob gave me a piece about the size of the end of my thumb and I put the whole thing in my mouth. It w

as sweet, and the com

b was like.... wax! Bee's wax! It's tasteless and kind of has the texture of chewing gum. Yum! I'm looking forward to getting more of that soon!
Then, we noticed the distinct shape of the queen cells... 3 in all. The girls were right on track with their development and nuturing, so we wanted to disturb them as little as possible and promptly returned them to the box. From these cells will emerge their new lead

er. The first queen out will claim the throne and quickly dispatch the remaining contenders. It's a cold existense in the bee world... there can only be one queen bee!
Next: Let's check out Bob's hive!