I fed the bees again yesterday.

Demeter was very quiet in the morning so I gave her another ziplock bag of sugar water with "Honey B Healthy" in it.  Demeter had graduated to a second brood box on the weekend of the hive warming party so when I took her cover off today the bees were way down inside.  No trouble at all.

Artemis got a bit excited when I took her cover off so I decided to open her up after I got home from work.

About 5 pm I fired up the smoker, put on all my bee gear (I'm tired of being stung) and opened the hive.  The bees on top of the bars seemed to be smaller than usual so I'm thinking they may be younger bees.  I smoked them down into the hive and removed the closest frame of foundation.  Then carefully, frame by frame, I closely examined the bees.  As you will see from the first photo the bees are capping some honey (the white area upper left, with a blob of pollen on it) and there are brood cells present as well, nicely capped with a tan colored material.  If you look closely you'll see a couple of bees with their heads down inside the cells.  They could be storing food or feeding brood - don't know for sure.  There is a bee about mid-frame, right hand side that is kind of blurry - I wonder if she's doing the wiggle dance!

This photo shows a worker bee with her front end in a cell.  What is she doing?  In the upper left corner is a capped cell - maybe a drone cell as it sticks up higher than the top edge of the empty cells around it.  The dark vertical line is actually a piece of wire used to hold the foundation in place.  If you look closely into the empty cells you will see that the hexagonal shape on this side is offset from the hexagonal shape on the other side.  I would suppose that this arrangement would make the cells stronger.  Kind of like staggering a pile of bricks rather than stacking them one on top of the other.

I found several queen cells and given what Gary told me last week I removed them. I squished some and also cut some free of the foundation so I could dissect them later.  When I do that I'll take some photos and post them if they turn out ok.

I added another deep super (brood box) to Artemis so she matches Demeter once again.  I also gave her bees some food and some of my homemade verroa mite patties.  The verroa mite used to be called Verroa jacobsoni but has had it's name changed to Verroa destructor!  That certainly tells us something about it's serious nature.