I opened the hive on Saturday afternoon and found the queen out and busy on the comb. I added the last three frames and refilled the level of the boardman feeder. There were a lot of bees carrying large pollen balls and a lot of new comb over 4 of the frames. I removed the queen cage and used it to talk with the children about how queens are accepted by the hives..
We got the next brood body assembled and painted on Saturday as well as the 5 shallow supers we expect to use for the Bee Pac honeycomb collection.
Michael is starting to take an interest in hive management. He and I sat out near the hive on Sunday afternoon to watch the activity levels. We saw a couple of workers removing dead bees - they would pick them up and fly away toward the west. I didn't see where they dropped them but it wasn't on their doorstep. Michael could tell me several facts about basic bee structure and wants his own veil so he can look inside too.
As long as I see good activity around the entrance this week I won't open the hive again until Saturday - we had a cool, windy day yesterday and a heavy frost this morning.
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