Another sunny Sunday for opening the hive again. I had removed the rapid-feeder last night so I could give it a good clean out so I had it ready to replace today, filled up again.
I don't think they'll need it for much longer - you can see in this picture that they've built up the wax all the way up to the end frame now.
The photo of this last frame shows clearly what the wax-building process is. Practically all of this frame is just the thin sheet of pure beeswax which I fixed in there originally (there is a hexagonal pattern pre-stamped on it to encourage them to make uniform cells - they would do a pretty good job of this themselves but it wouldn't be quite so straight and regular). This original sheet is so thin that through it you can even see the shadows of bees which are on the opposite side.As you can see, they have just begun to build up the cells with their own wax and will continue to build them up until each cell is as deep as the wooden frame. They do this on both sides of the frame and each side can often look entirely different if they are using the cells for storing different things.
They are sometimes reluctant to start work on the outer side of the end frames (that's the side not visible in the photo) so I flipped this frame 180 degrees before I put it back in. Once they've built this up I can be sure of an entirely full brood box all the way across. Any expansion from here will be made by placing empty frames above these ones.
It is becoming far more crowded in the hive and it's harder to see much other than thousands of bees scurrying around. Thankfully we've now had a few weeks learning from watching a small colony so we're getting better at spotting things quickly and even pushing the bees out of the way with our fingers if necessary!
Something very obvious on this frame is that large raised cell in the centre of all those other empty ones. This one is a drone cell - a male bee. Because these cells are larger than those of the females they are easy to spot as they stick out quite a bit higher. Also, they take a few days longer to hatch which explains why this one is still there when all his sisters around him have climbed out and started work already! (There's one in the centre left, just sticking her head out for the first time).
Something else we spotted straight away is that Amidala has managed to remove her red spot! She's clearly visible on the photo above (you'll know the queen bee when you see her - she has a huge dark abdomen). It could be that my paint blob hadn't dried enough last time so we decided to try again. 
Of course it could be that the authentic 'bee-paint' I'm using is just so non-toxic that it's just licked stright off by the bees - it does look and smell just like the kids' poster paint (but in a tiny nail varnish style pot and about a thousand times more expensive!)
