Visit from Padge and Heather

Today, Padge and Heather came to see the bees. They sat on the deck while I was doing the hive inspection, but they came up close to see a few things that I was pointing out. Here I am showing Mom and Heather some eggs, nectar, and pollen:

I also finally looked at the cardboard panel beneath my screened bottom boards this time, they were covered in cruft - it looked like mostly pollen that had fallen off of the bees, chewed out wax caps, and a bunch of squirming hive beetle larvae (gross). Padge, Mom and Heather came over to take a look:

I also put on my grease patties (that I had forgotten to put on in the last inspection). These are part crisco and part sugar sandwiched in between two sheets of wax paper. It helps guard against tracheal mites (I have no idea why):

And here is a really nice shot of a drone bee (boy bee) next to a worker bee (girl bee). The drone is on the right and has a larger body and huge eyes, the worker bee is on the left.

I was hoping that I'd be able to put a honey super on the Thistle hive, but they had only drawn out about 65% of their latest hive body. The Mint hive looked like it was only about 50% drawn. I did see a bunch of eggs in both hives, so I didn't bother looking in the bottom brood box..

For this inspection, I tried using a mixture of my new smoker fuels. I put in a few handfuls of cotton and a little handful of wood pellets. I didn't have to relight my smoker at all! This is the winning mixture for me, man I wish I knew about this last year.