April 12

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I jumped the gun a little and looked into the hives. All good news so far. Found both queen cages and they were empty. Here's a picture of "Bravo". The bees started drawing comb in the front top corner right next to the feeders. They even built a little comb right on the feeders. (Not shown.)



Here's a frame from Bravo. Looks to be about 25% drawn out. The drawn area is about 4 frames wide and tapers as it moves away from this frame.






A frame from "Alpha". About the same situation. The white area is the foundation that I gave them to build on. You can see a little bit of yellow at bottom left. That's where they have "drawn out" or built the cells up nice and deep.

A quick look and it was time to close the hives. No use slowing them down at this critical time.

See the ones on the upper edges of the box? They would have been squished by the cover so they had to be moved. I tried brushing them off. They didn't like the brush at all and let me know where I could stick it. I didn't get stung, but they got in my face and followed for a few yards as I retreated, blowing smoke behind me. When I came back I slowly slid the cover on, giving them time to move. They were much more happy with that. So much for my brand new bee brush.

I wanted to get a peek at some cells to see if they contained eggs. The bees were 3 or 4 deep on the parts that I wanted to see. Decided to skip it for now and ask about it on the message board. I'm told I can just push them aside with a finger and they won't mind too much. They're cool with things organic like fingers. Not so much with plastic brush bristles.