Bees are so photogenic. They are proof that stripes do not make you look fat.
After being cooped up for a week in the nuc box, the bees move into their new home. (Notice the disgusting wax moth larvae near the center hole of the nuke box. Yuck.)
The trapped-out bees have been busy making comb on the bias inside the nuc box. The first three tiers of comb in this picture are on the same frame!
A close-up of the tiered frame. Nurse bees fuss over the brood. My favorite part of this image is that you can see one bee just starting to emerge from her cell. There's an uncapped cell with a little white face and two black eyes peeping out in the lower middle part of the frame.
Ants used a vine that fell off our fence onto the top of the hive to invade our grumpy beehive. The bees formed the apian version of a human shield across the top opening of the hive to keep the ants out. The bees plugged the entrance with their bodies and then later, about 40 bees formed a kill squad and bit the ants that were swarming over the outside of the box to death. By the next day there were only a few ants to be seen whereas the night before there had been thousands.
