I had Jerry (from Moab) come by to inspect my hives and take bee samples for a USDA survey he's working on. The first hive we decided to work was my queen box in the back yard.
We went through the entire hive, both colonies and didn't see any open brood or eggs. There were a few capped drone cells and a few capped worker cells but that's it. I had split these hives 18 days ago (story here). We did here piping on the north end and we found opened queen cells on both ends. I'll wait a week and check again before I really worry.
Good News:
I had Jerry look through my dying rustic hive and he agreed with me that there are no signs of a brood disease. It's so helpful to have experienced eyes looking at the comb with me. He pointed out "entombed pollen" on some of the comb. I'd seen it before but did not know what it was called or what it was. The girls decide for some reason that the pollen in that cell is no good and they wax it over. Interesting to me that they wouldn't just remove it. They must know what they are doing.
Really Good News:
I was showing off my Sun Barrel Hive to Jerry and we determined that they are building some very nice, very white, very straight comb. Right where I wanted them too. I removed the comb stabilizers from the bars in the hive. they are a bit small (just a touch) and they were pulling the tops of the bars together. I'll adjust them and put them back on or maybe I won't worry about it. They seem to be fine without the stabilizers. We also noticed what looked like a pile of salt on the hive floor under the cluster. When we picked some up it was wax flakes. They must have been producing so much wax that they dropped some. The comb they had built was also packed with honey. I did not see any eggs but I didn't remove any bees to really look either. Once I do, I'll remove the queen "includer". I'm very happy about how this hive is working out.
view from below
with stabilizers on
from above (showing comb)
from the front (showing comb)
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