First Inspection

My first hive inspection was this morning. Since Monday, I had peeked into the top feeder most of the days since installing the bees on Monday. Tuesday was still pretty cold, 50° or so, and the bees had filled up the top feeder and were chowing down. Wednesday hit 55–60°, maybe even warmer, and I noticed bees in the dandelions around the yard and the feeder was completely empty of bees, presumably they were all out getting “real” food.

On to the first inspection. The hive looked fine so opened it up and moved the frames from the queen cage area.

Rearranging the frames.

First thing is to check out the queen cage. Looks like she got out OK. Also looks like I should have checked in on the queen after just a few days instead of waiting a full five, check out the two big chunks of “extra” comb, those really shouldn’t be there and with them there I can’t put the 10th frame in.

The queen cage exposed. Notice the extra comb

A lot of bees on the cage

No queen here. Yay!

Queen appears to be free, presumably laying eggs in the box, and all is good!

Really don’t want that comb to be there.

This is what I’m talkin’ about:

Awesome!

So far; so good. Now I need to go ask in one of the bee forums on how best to deal with the chunks of comb between those two frames.

So far no bears, or if there were they didn’t mess with the hive. Gotta get that electric fence installed!