Pablo Picasso never drew comb!

      Well, I was out of town for a week, days after I installed my bees. This quite stressed me out to be honest. However, my son is in the Navy, and needed his car. It was a lovely visit. But after a week of being gone, I'll bee honest, I was glad to bee home. I did get a chance to see a few bee hives along my travels, many were actually at some of the wineries I visited. Have I ever mentioned that I am a wine lover? :) Turns out that many of the vineyards we stopped at along the way had a nice amount of hives! I even chatted a bit with some of the proprietors about the bees. Of course some of them use the honey for Mead and some just to pollinate the flowers in the orchards and vineyards. I digress...

      So I got home in the nick of time! My bees were down to the last dregs of food in their feeder (since my husband is allergic I am the only one who can mess with them), so I got them fed yesterday morning, and observed that they were buzzing around nicely. I opted not to open the hive in the morning. I had so much to do, getting caught up on stuff around my house. So, I went ahead and got most things done during the day. In the evening I put on my hoodie, hat, gloves and veil. Armed with my bee brush, hive tool and frame grip went ahead and opened the hive to look for larvae and comb.
     Not wanting to keep the hive open very long I moved in determined quick movements, and let's face it I really don't have much of a clue what I was really looking for. I didn't locate the queen in the waning light, but I did see that they had drawn out comb and that many of the cells were sealed. I took this to be a good sign. I looked at several frames finding the same thing. It seems there are only small clumps of comb here and there, and in one spot it seemed to have a big long comb drawn on the frame, that didn't really look like a regular comb, I've never seen a queen cell, but would be what I imagine it would look like. I'm a bit stressed out about it, but not so much that I am going to do anything rash. I may try to locate the queen again, and if I can't find her also have some pics of the strange comb, to send it to one or two of the bee folks I've met to see if they can tell me what it is. I'm just so inexperienced I don't really know.

     I noticed this morning that my stack of extra supers and second hive has generated a lot of interest of my bees, or some bees anyway. It was buzzing with them, I did a little digging around of the extras to make sure that my bees aren't migrating over. Honestly, I think they were just checking it out. There were no bees inside, just looked like they were just being curious, part of it was the used hive and did have some old wax in it, which I am thinking perhaps had some old honey. I'm going to keep and eye on it just in case. The trees behind our house are in bloom looks like perhaps pears or some other fruit, bees abound! I'm wondering if it's time to take out the entrance blocker. I think it maybe OK now that they are it appears they are doing what they are supposed to be doing and I am confident that we have larvae and comb. I am going to continue to feed. I put in my garden before I left, and while some of my plants didn't make it, looks like a good many did and so therefore I am anticipating replanting some new stuff and waiting for some of the other goodies I just sewed in the ground directly to take root. I anticipate my bees having plenty of food in the next months. Today, back to the nursery to add in more plants. I will let you know what I discover about the strange cells in the hive and try to shoot some pics of it so that if you have a similar one you can either tell me what it is or know what yours is! See you in a few days!