Sights from the Bee Hives – Brennah's Backyard

I recently got a couple new colonies of honey bees. These were nucleus colonies, which are just tiny honey bee colonies in small (and more portable) boxes. They rapidly outgrow such small boxes, so moving them into new boxes (and looking them over and taking photos while I was at it) was my first task. Here’s a bit of what I encountered.

honey bee eggs and just hatched larvae — Honey bee eggs (mostly on the left) and just hatched larvae. The liquid around the larvae is their food; probably royal jelly. (All larvae are fed royal jelly until they are three days old, after three days, only queens are fed royal jelly.)

The black background to these photos is foundation, a template that the bees construct their comb on inside the hive. Foundation is a sheet of wax, or plastic (or wax coated plastic) printed with a hexagon pattern that the bees draw out into comb. In this case it is black plastic, which is often helpful for beginners to be able to see the bee eggs and young larvae, which is useful in assessing the health of the colony. (You actually literally have to train your eyes to see them; I had good eyesight and knew what I was looking for when I started, but I simply wasn’t able to see them through my veil so I would take it off temporarily. Now I can see them just fine through my veil.)

honey bee eggs and young larvae, with two eggs in one cell — Honey bee eggs and just hatched larvae. One cell contains two eggs. Very young queens sometimes do this when they are still learning how to lay eggs properly.

honey bees on comb — Close up of a few bees on the comb. The light in this picture highlights their fur (they even have fur on their eyes). Young bees are especially fuzzy.

honey bees with eggs and just hatched larvae — Honey bees with eggs (mostly on the left again) and just hatched larvae.

worker honey bees with queen — Worker honey bees surrounding their queen. This queen is marked with a white dot on her back (this is also something that can be helpful for beginners to be able to spot the queen among the thousands of worker bees, but it can also be helpful for people who have a lot of hives, or are breeding queens and need to keep track of them more carefully).

One thought on “Sights from the Bee Hives”