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Good news from the Moosicorn honeybee hive! After our bees swarmed (half of them left along with the queen), things were not looking good for the bees. Not only was half the hive absent at a time when the bees need to be storing honey for winter, but it appeared the new queen wasn’t in business. But we’re happy to report that, a few weeks later, things are in full swing! The queen is laying and the hive is HEAVY with honey!

In the photo below you can see the stages of a baby bee’s life. From left to right you can see tiny eggs, small larva, bigger larva and then capped brood.

The life of a worker bee starts out as an egg laid by the queen. After hatching, the larva is tended to by the nurse bees. On day 9, the nurse bees build a cap over top of the cell. On the 21st day, the new worker bee emerges from its cell.

Look closely at the photo below and you’ll see hundreds of eggs:

Here you can see larva and capped brood.

The bees have been hard at work storing pollen. This entire frame was filled with bright orange stores. Foraging bees carry the pollen back to the hive on their legs. And thank goodness for the pollen collection: a happy side effect of this is pollination! Pollen is an important food source for the developing brood. Nurse bees make something called “bee bread.”  This mixture of pollen, honey, and secretions is fed to larva and newly hatched worker bees.

In addition to all the new life in the hive, we were happy to see a lot of honey storage underway. There were several frames of capped, ripe honey. We took a little taste and boy was it good! It had a subtle cinnamon flavor to it. Here is some of that tasty honey in the making!