After the inspection I took to the internet to see if my concern about my feeders leaking and stuck together bees was right. Some people suggested my bees might be sticking together due to festooning and based on this picture I thought they might be right, it would make sense because they were making new wax so this behavior would be expected. I was still thrown off by the jelly clumps until I heard back from my bee teacher that she had similar clumps in her hive and that it was food from the transport feeder (remember the Genovese Hive package had a weird trough like feeder, so it would make sense the food had to be solid). I also checked my feeders and they didn't seem to be leaking so I think that mystery was explained.
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| Some bees with chained together legs |
Then I was looking at pictures from the inspection several days later when I noticed something that sent thrills and chills down my spine. On this picture of the comb we had cut and pasted from the lid to a frame I spotted eggs. I had zoomed in as far as I could to try and see what they had been storing in the cells when I noticed them. I'm not surprised I missed them on the inspection they where translucent white on translucent white but I noticed them all the same. As thrilled as I was to learn I had a laying queen 5 days after package install I was even more concerned I had manhandled the queen when I brushed off that comb and also worried I had somehow damaged the eggs that were there by keeping them out of the hive too ling while we tried to figure out how to attach the comb to a frame. Crossing my fingers I didn't muck it all up!
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| If you look hard into the cells you can see the three lines of the comb on the other side coming together. In the center of those 3 lines you can see a smaller incomplete white line appearing to go in the other direction...egg |
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