What actually happened today

So....there's nothing as malleable as a plan, right? I talked to my friend and fellow bee keeper today and she suggested that I not go in my hive since I just went in Thursday to verify the queen got released. The only thing, however, that I did to Joel's hive on Wednesday was to take out the queen cage, which was empty (well, of the queen anyway) and on the top of the frames, so there was minimal disturbance. He hadn't been in yet, either, so he opened his up to check on it.

First a little smoke around the hive to calm them down...
This is what they looked like when the inner cover came off:

He pulled apart the busiest frames to check for burr comb (improperly placed comb):



It was a good thing he went back in, as it turns out, because there was a curious growth on one of the busiest frames. It didn't really look like my burr comb, because it had a sort of pocket on top but it seemed to be attached all around, and it had a small bulbish growth on the bottom. Concerning!
We decided to table this issue and ask some people who know more than we do about this.

Later, I drove to Sandy's house, our fellow Bee School attendee. She also has two hives in her yard and has been in once, but had some issues. Like me, her queen cage fell to the bottom in one. And in the other one there seemed to be a big amount of burr comb.

Her friend who has kept bees for several years came over, and she was AWESOME. She walked Sandy through the first hive (queen was out of the cage that had fallen, and we located her on the frame, plus she cleared out some burr comb)



and had her work her own second hive (we spotted the queen in this one too, and she cleaned up an ENORMOUS burr comb shaped just like a heart...aw...the bees love her!!).

We both expressed that we felt so bad that the bees had invested so much energy in making comb that we just scooped off!

I peppered the expert with questions, and showed her the picture of Joel's hive. She thinks it's just burr comb, but in a different configuration than the others we've seen so far. At any rate it would be impossible to have supercedure (new queen cell) this early, because there was no brood (babies) to begin with. She suggested to either clean it up if it's easy to, or just leave it and be resigned to the fact that he'll have a funky looking comb on that frame. We probably should have completely lifted the frame out of the hive to inspect it, but there's just something about mucking with a big box of bees that makes you want to be as minimally invasive as possible. Next time.

One thing I did notice is that Sandy's comb seems to be a lot more white than mine. But I also noticed that mine have started bringing in lots of white and pale yellow pollen rather than only the dark orange stuff I saw the other day. That could be why I noticed that our newly blossomed Hoper Crab is positively buzzing today!! Seriously, you can hear it standing under it. It's a gorgeous tree. I'll have to post it for you.


Finally, here is the burr comb I pulled off the other day.



You can see how they structure the honeycomb on the second photo...you can just about see the back layer and how the middle of the cell is placed on the "Y" of the front layer for maximum strength. It's amazing, isn't it?