Erin and I went out to inspect the hives, and had a great time in the hives. As soon as we got there this morning, we noticed the bees coming back in with bunches of pollen stuck to their legs.
It took a little while to get a good close up picture of a couple of the girls with pollen, but it was worth it. Every few seconds another one or two would land, full of pollen, and scurry inside the hive to drop it off. After doing some searching online, we've decided that this pollen looks closest to pear pollen, using
a pollen source chart hosted at Wikipedia. The inside of the hive had lots of these girls waiting to offload their pollen so they could get back out foraging again. Just like them, we were headed inside the hive. After a few puffs of smoke, and a little work, we got into the good stuff on the frames.
On this frame, all of those dark spots are the pollen that is being deposited by the bees. This is one of the frames closer to the center of the brood chamber, so it's a little farther along than most of the others. The yellowish cells are full of sugar syrup or nectar (I'm not 100% sure which.) Most of the rest of the cells (that are still white) contain eggs that will soon become larvae, and a few weeks after that will hatch into new worker bees. Look at the picture below. Most of those cells contain eggs (I've pointed out a few for you) that look like small grains of rice. While it looks like the queen is hard at work, she has the potential to lay between 1500-2000 eggs in a single day, so this was a walk in the park for her.
We were also able to see some capped honey on a few of the other frames, as you can see below.
The small bit of waxy covering on the cells near the center of the picture is the beginnings of wax capping. The wax covers up the honey, sugar syrup, etc. until the bees need to use it, at which point they will open it back up to eat. Speaking of eating, the last picture below was taken on our hive tool. Erin had been using it to scrape off some of the burr and bridge comb the bees had built while we had the queen cage in the hive. Afterwards, it had some sugar syrup/nectar/honey on it, and our good little worker bees weren't going to let it go to waste. See her tongue sticking down to lap up the syrup? It's not a probiscus like you see on mosquitos, that's all tongue!
It took a little while to get a good close up picture of a couple of the girls with pollen, but it was worth it. Every few seconds another one or two would land, full of pollen, and scurry inside the hive to drop it off. After doing some searching online, we've decided that this pollen looks closest to pear pollen, using a pollen source chart hosted at Wikipedia. The inside of the hive had lots of these girls waiting to offload their pollen so they could get back out foraging again. Just like them, we were headed inside the hive. After a few puffs of smoke, and a little work, we got into the good stuff on the frames.
On this frame, all of those dark spots are the pollen that is being deposited by the bees. This is one of the frames closer to the center of the brood chamber, so it's a little farther along than most of the others. The yellowish cells are full of sugar syrup or nectar (I'm not 100% sure which.) Most of the rest of the cells (that are still white) contain eggs that will soon become larvae, and a few weeks after that will hatch into new worker bees. Look at the picture below. Most of those cells contain eggs (I've pointed out a few for you) that look like small grains of rice. While it looks like the queen is hard at work, she has the potential to lay between 1500-2000 eggs in a single day, so this was a walk in the park for her. 
We were also able to see some capped honey on a few of the other frames, as you can see below.
The small bit of waxy covering on the cells near the center of the picture is the beginnings of wax capping. The wax covers up the honey, sugar syrup, etc. until the bees need to use it, at which point they will open it back up to eat. Speaking of eating, the last picture below was taken on our hive tool. Erin had been using it to scrape off some of the burr and bridge comb the bees had built while we had the queen cage in the hive. Afterwards, it had some sugar syrup/nectar/honey on it, and our good little worker bees weren't going to let it go to waste. See her tongue sticking down to lap up the syrup? It's not a probiscus like you see on mosquitos, that's all tongue!
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