This week's hive inspection.

Today was the only day I was available that the weather looked fairly decent, so I cracked open my hive. Angie and Tate came over to watch and help, and Maddie was there. About two or three frames in, Maddie yelped, grabbed her ankle, and started screaming that she had been stung. Instead of stopping and letting us help her, she ran like her hair was on fire, all around the yard. Oh well, next time, she'll wear long pants, I guess. Sarah went in and took care of her, while Angie, Tate, and I finished up.

As far as the inspection goes, there was nothing spectacular at first, a few queen cells I had to remove, and a couple little pieces of burr comb near the edges. Otherwise, she's laying well, lots of capped brood, and I saw a few chewing out of their cells. I had one frame that was just about completely eggs and uncapped larvae, so that one will be producing pretty soon.

When I was on frame #8, it started raining just a little. I just kinda glanced at frame #9, then got ready to close up. Just as I was putting the frames in their places, we found the queen. This is the first time I've seen her since I've placed the queen cage. She was big!!! And a beautiful gold color, with almost no black on her.

Maddie was fine by the time we finished our inspection, and was playing with Tate by the time I finished cleaning up. She says she's done with the bees for the day, but she's not ready to get rid of them.

Housekeeping things we did today:

- installed 2nd hive body
- cleaned and refilled hive top feeder
- re-leveled the hive (the ground settled a little, and it was sloping to the right side.

Later, I'll go into how I have my hive set up, and what I did to get the 2nd hive body on. We've also decided to start checking the box every two weeks instead of every week. No sense in setting them back weekly, if it's not really needed.