pictures- finally!

one of my co-workers, Sean, offered up his photography skills (and curiosity) to brave a visit to my beehives! thanks sean!
(i'll need to correct the positioning of the pictures later...)

The smoker preparation


The beesuit preparation (this is when the kids in the neighborhood start looking nervous)






Getting ready to open the hives...this is hive #1, the "good" hive, with a second box on top for expansion.


Give a few puffs of smoke to warn them...




Here's the feeders of sugar water- now empty. More smoke to warn them.


the top of the inner cover of the hive, with some wax.


Removing the feeders and inner cover


Inner cover removed, this is the top box. Smoke them some more...



Removing the first frame (near the wall of the hive). This frame doesn't have comb drawn upon it yet.


I noticed some eggs already in this upper chamber (second box). The queen is expanding the brood chamber.


Looking for more eggs...its hard when your head is so big (in the suit) it creates a big shadow!


Blurry closeup- something you might see in your nightmares?


See how the bees fill in any extra space (bottom of the frame) with wax? the "bee space" rule has been offended. If bees see a space bigger than ~ 1 cm they fill it with wax. If less than 1/8", they fill it with propolis.


Here you can see capped brood, the flat yellow cells. Soon more bees will emerge from here. These are worker bee (female) brood...you can tell since it is flat with the surface of the frame. IF it were drone brood the little cells would look like there was a bubble protruding from the frame.


Uh, Do I really have a handful of bees in my face??





This is hive #2, with a newly injected swarm. YOu can notice that these bees are darker than the first hive's (probably carnoleans vs the italians in the first hive)
Also, there are more drone bees in this hive, since the laying worker (that I hope quits laying in light of the queen that came w/ the swarm) can only lay drone eggs.
I did see some capped brood in this hive that was not drone brood, that is good, and shows that the new queen is laying.

Hey, I just noticed a cell on this frame that looks like a swarm cell, see it? Just a little left of center bottom, half a peanut shell looking thing with the end opening toward the bottom. Hmmm, I hope I caught that/cut it out when I was there...else I'll have a swarm on my hands.