It's Saturday! The sun is shining, it's 10:30am and it's a refreshing 92 degrees outside in North Florida. Haha no. Not refreshing for ME, but I suppose the bees like it. Time to do my first *real* inspection.

Like I keep telling myself, I'm not afraid of a bee sting. But I also suited completely up from head to toe because apparently I am afraid, or maybe just not stupid, but probably afraid. I put on my vented jacket with hood, beekeeper pants, socks, shoes and gloves. I just got my size small gloves and yep, my gloves are still too big because little hands. I need to buck up and stop being intimidated because working with too-big gloves is not fun and bare handed would be so much easier. So I suited up and I'm ready to go. It took me only 2 times out there to decide that I needed a vented bee jacket that is made with 3 layers of a mesh material for air flow. Life Pro Tip: If you really hate sweating, maybe don't get a beehive in a warm climate because you're going to sweat. So. Much.

I did go out there with a purpose today, besides just looking. I've had my bees for 6 days. I mainly wanted to check that the queen is still laying eggs. Spoiler: She is. But no pix again. I didn't actually find the queen this time, but I did find new 1 and 2 day old eggs, so she's there and keeping busy. Good enough.

Of the 10 frames in the brood box, I pulled and inspected 8 of them. I removed 2 frames of honey/pollen and set them aside. When I pulled the 3rd frame, a new frame that is only just being drawn (workers building new wax comb), as I went to rest it on the frame holder, dun dunnnn... I DROPPED IT. Bees got angry, but I did not panic and lose my cool and run away screaming because I was encased in bee suit stuff and I was super glad I had it on.

This is where the frame dropped. These bees are saying WTF just happened?!

Thankfully it was a light frame with a little bit of comb on it. Thankfully it was not a heavy frame of honey, or worse brood, or terrible the one with the queen on it. I set it aside and kept going.

I carefully, even more carefully, inspected each frame. I could tell I was getting close to the queen because the first 2 frames were just honey and pollen, but as I got closer to her, the frames had capped brood, then uncapped larvae, and finally eggs. I found new one day old eggs that were still upright in their cells. The queen is nearby, but I didn't find her. I checked the next frame too, didn't find her. That doesn't mean she wasn't there, more likely I'm not all that great at spotting her yet. There was a clump of workers in one corner so I suspect that's where she was, but I still didn't see her. I very super carefully replaced the frame in the box.

I'm 90% sure the queen is on this middle frame, or the one to the left of it. There are eggs on both frames.

Instead of replacing the two frames of honey and pollen that I set aside, I made some room in the box for two new empty frames, and put the two frames of honey in a second box, stacked it on top and closed everything up. The first box is getting pretty full and I want them to start building up the second brood box before winter. More room for the queen to lay eggs, and more room for the workers to store honey and pollen. Oh! I spotted a bee carrying pollen! Yay! That makes me happy because not only is a bee carrying pollen super cute, but since I'm not supplying pollen, they're finding it naturally.

So now I have a 2 deep hive. There's plenty of room for them to expand before winter and my queen is busy laying eggs like she should. The brood pattern (meaning the pattern in the hive that the queen is laying eggs and those eggs are developing) is really good. I like this queen. She's a good queen. She deserves a name. Suggestions? Queenie McQueenface?

The top box has 2 frames of honey/pollen and 8 empty frames that look like this:

The black plastic is a foundation made of food grade plastic which has been coated with natural beeswax. It's molded with a honeycomb pattern and the bees will soon start building comb in the same honeycomb shape. They would do this naturally on their own without a foundation, but using it helps speed the process along, and gives the built wax comb more support so I'm less likely to break it when moving frames. On my next inspection, I'll take a picture so you can see how much work they get done in a week or two.

So first real inspection done. Some things I learned:

My queen is awesome.
I try really hard not to, but I have squished some bees. :(
Handle frames really really carefully! Super carefully!
Size small gloves are still too big for my baby hands.
I'm glad I wore gloves because I watched a bee sting my glove.
Propolis (stuff bees use to fill cracks and space in their hive) is super sticky and gets all over my glove fingers.
My bees can empty quart mason jar of sugar syrup in a day.
It's really hot in a bee suit when it's 90+ outside.
A sweatband might be a good idea.
Sweat. Sweat. And more sweat. I'm gonna to go shower now...

I love you little honey bees! 🐝

First real inspection!