The Buzz Grows...

I have been fence-building the past couple of days off. My best friends came and helped me Tuesday. We got the corner posts all set. I've got a couple of them braced now. Fencing is HARD work, but I feel good about it because it is a huge improvement to the farm. Hopefully there'll be a little herd of goats inside the new fence sooner than later.

I also checked on Meagan, Emily, and Hive 4 today. The girls continue to build comb, store nectar and pollen, and tend the babies. Meagan (my niece) helped me check them, and everything looks good today. There are some great photos to share:

• First photo: The hive is basically a 4-sided box that frames hang in by their top edge. When the bees moved in, each frame had only a flat sheet of beeswax on it. The bees build every cell on it before eggs can be laid or nectar and pollen can be stored. (If you wonder about my lack of bee suit, I don't miss it. It seems that I get stung less without the suit and gloves than with them.)
  
• Next: Meagan's queen is spotted hard at work. I'd have a much harder time spotting her, but for the white mark on her back.
• Third: This photo shows an excellent amount of eggs in the bottoms of the cells. They are the tiny white dots. They spend a few days as eggs, and then a little more than a week as larvae.You can also see a range of colors of pollen in the upper section of the photo.
  
• Last: As the larvae mature, they grow until they fill most of the cell (bottom of the photo). The last stage of development is pupae, when the baby bees are capped over (top of the photo). Seeing a pattern of eggs in almost every cell in an area is an indication of a good (in this case, efficient) queen.