My First Sting and Other Accomplishments...

I went into my hive yesterday morning to find my queen and see if she'd started laying eggs yet. It was a little early to check, but I'm glad I did. When I pulled out my first frame, I found this... The bees are supposed to build their wax comb within the frame, in a nice even and flat pattern. But, as I learned in bee school, sometimes a colony introduced to a new hive with a caged queen, will build a structure like this one around the queen's cage. So it is a problem, but a common enough one and fairly easy to solve. All I had to do was take it off. Yup, that's all. Yup, that's how I got stung. It turns out, the bees get upset when you destroy their hard work. I hope I won't have to do that again! Now that I've gotten my first sting out of the way, I feel like an official beekeeper.

Other accomplishments yesterday include, easily spotting my queen, Elizabeth Woodville (not an easy task sometimes!) and graduating from beekeeping school (while my new sting was still swelling.)