Awesomeness alert!

check out that gorgeous pollen!Sometimes I feel like kind of a dweeb for always taking pictures of stuff wherever I go, whatever I'm doing, whatever's on my plate or on my bookcase or in my shopping bag.  It's just so fantastic that I rarely ever have to carry along a camera anymore, since my phone does such a smashing job of capturing what interests me.  One less thing to carry.  But sometimes Joe will ask me, incredulous, "are you taking a picture of that?" And generally the answer is Yes.  

Yep, I most certainly am taking a picture of that towering chocolate dessert.  

And since I'm fresh off a full day of assistant-teaching beekeeping (full story in tomorrow's Country Mouse Monday), I admit that I've been thinking pretty much nonstop about how I would teach beekeeping, left to my own devices, what I would particularly talk about, what I think are the most essential and interesting aspects of beekeeping to share.  So as we suited up to check our bees this afternoon, I made a point of slipping my phone into one of the myriad pockets of my white painter's pants, perfect for holding everything I might need during a hive inspection.  Maybe I'd see something that would make a really good visual for educational purposes.  Or just something really pretty to share.

Bingo.  

While checking the Italians, lo and behold something amazing unfolded before our eyes: a baby bee emerging from its cell, its fuzzy little body halfway out.  A little farther down the frame, another baby chewing its way through the wax cap on its cell, just seconds behind its sister bee.  Off came the gloves, out came the camera, Joe obliging me by holding the frame just so in the light.  The resulting photo came out great.  

But the photo captured more than we could see in that moment of examining the frame, which is pretty vindicating all around.

One of the basic things we're looking for when we're inspecting hives is evidence that the Queen is strong.  Seeing capped brood is good, seeing larvae is better, seeing eggs is best of all, because it means that as recently as 3 days ago, the Queen was still laying.  After 3 days, those eggs hatch into little larvae.

On this inspection, we saw capped brood and we saw babies being born.  But since it takes 21 days for a worker to hatch, we could still have a problem.  In that period between the laying of that worker egg and its emergence from its cell, who knows what might have happened.  This is why weekly or bi-weekly inspections all summer long are so important, and why seeing eggs leaves a beekeeper with a good feeling of phew, it's good, the Queen is doing her thing, the colony'll be ok.

We didn't see eggs on this inspection, so we walked away feeling a little unsure about these new bees, with just a little bit of uncertainty gnawing around our edges.

Until, that is, I looked at the pictures I'd taken and let out a whoop.  Behold: awesomeness.

First of all, this photo is a great illustration of the differences between workers (left) and a drone (right, see little arrow).  He is bigger and has huge eyes to enable him to do the one thing he's born to do: fly fast and high and mate a virgin queen.  

Second, at the second arrow, you can see the antennae and top of the head of a baby bee that has chewed her way out of the cell and is ready to take up her place in the colony.  

Third, and this is best of all, the photo allows us to see what we missed with our eyes 'cause they're so small: find the 3rd arrow and you'll see a honeybee egg, like a tiny grain of rice glued to the back of the cell.  Look at other cells and you'll see more.  This is what we want to see: just one egg per cell, positioned just right, ready to get started on its three week process to creating a new member of the colony.

With this photo, this moment in the live of the hive captured, I am feeling less of a dweeb for always taking pictures.  But that doesn't make me any less of a dweeb, obvy, because here I am jumping around about this photo, about the tiny little eggs we managed to capture without meaning to, letting us know that all is well with the Italians.  And in 21 days, those little eggs will be baby bees chewing their way out into the world, making their contribution to the beauty of the hive.

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