A New Hope (Never thought I'd make a Star Wars reference...)

It's been a week and 5 days since we've installed the Moana hive. We cracked her open last Saturday, just to take a peek at any progress. Saw lots of brood, covered caps, larvae, and eggs. No sight of the Queen, even though she's dotted with a yellow dot.

On the left are uncapped and capped brood. On the right are cells that are starting to fill up with nectar to be made into honey. 

Inside the cells are worker bee larvae, they look like little, curved worms. To the very left, are drone larvae cells, they're bigger than the worker bee cells. 

But, since we saw eggs, that means she's been active at least 3 days ago. Not too much capped honey, but there were cells with nectar. When we first installed the hive, we had added a deep super below the medium one that was installed. I had hoped that the bees would take to it and start filling up those frames, but the last time we checked on the hive, they were pretty much ignoring it. Bees tend to build their hives up and out, instead of downwards. We may leave that deep super there, especially since that's how our sugar feeder is set up. If the bees do that well that the hive is really stacking up high, then I'll remove that bottom deep super, but for now, it can just stay. Since the feeder that we're using is located on the bottom super, we might look to changing that with the next hive, or later down the road with this one. If it's too much of a hassle to get to the feeder on the bottom super, we may move to using a top feeder instead, which is how I've learned through my Bee Club.

We noticed some cells on the top box (added a week before our install) with black larvae. Ed says this happens if it got too hot in the box. There were only a few, so not much to worry about, he says.

After work during the week, we've been checking to see if there are bees going in with pollen on their legs. We haven't really seen too much, which I kind of got worried about. I texted Ed, my mentor beek, and he says about 1 in 10 bees should be carrying pollen, but I feel like we haven't even really seen that. But, I still have to remember that the hive was just installed just over a week ago, we just opened the hive last week, and that causes stress on the bees. We've decided to leave the hive untouched until Ed comes to do an inspection, we'll just leave them be to do their thing. The number of flies, that seemed to be crowding around the hive after the install, have definitely gone down. Now, there are just a few flies here and there that hang around the entrance. Haven't really seen any more yellow jackets either, since the one time I witnessed one kill a honeybee, rip her head off, and eat it. Terrifying.

I've also started knocking on the hive to start learning about what a "content" buzzing sounds like. It's a low, gentle hum. Tried knocking on it early in the morning, before work one day, completely silent. To the point where I was thinking they had left in the night. They were still there when I checked them that afternoon :)  That got me thinking, that bees must sleep in. Which, makes sense, since flowers don't open up until the sun is up and out! We constantly see them around our flowers in the yard, along with some bumbles and carpenter bees, but I feel like they're doing well, but we will see how much progress they've done the next time we open her up. For now, we just have to trust that these little girls are doing their thing and just let them BEE.