Olea hive inspection

Today was the first inspection of Olea's top bar hive.  I watched a couple of You Tubes to see how to go about it.  I was also concerned about detaching the combs from the observation window.  I couldn't find any advice online, so I used a steak knife.  It worked quite well. 

The bees are doing great.  They have drawn 10 or 11combs (I can't take notes while I'm in the hive). They were working on the next comb, pictured to the right.

New comb being drawn

Comb with capped brood and honey

I have turned the bar upside down and rested it on top of the hive.

 

The next comb was not completely drawn, but all the rest were.

On the left is one of the combs with, I believe, capped brood. This may all be honey, however. The lighter capped cells at the bottom (actually the top; the comb is upside-down) is capped honey. 

 

As I continued inspecting frames closer to the entrance, I did find definite brood, including a section of capped drone cells.  Here is a beautifully shaped comb with hatched and capped brood cells.

Then I saw the queen on frame number 6.  I was able to get one or two pictures of her.

I believe she is the one from the new hive.  At least it looks like her- same size and color.

Close-up of the queen

Check out the eggs

When I was looking at the photo on Picasa, I saw that I had also photographed cells with eggs!  They're the tiny white things in the bottom of the cells.  Pretty cool, yes?

I took out the feeder, moved the false back all the way to the back and put in more top bars.  I put spacers between the last 10 bars.  This is where I expect they'll store the honey.