Home Built Comb

There has been a lot of rain this last week.  You may have heard of all the thunderstorms and flooding and tornadoes and the like.  I haven't had much to do with the bees, it's been frustrating.

But I do have some pictures from last week when I checked up on some queens that were hatching from splits.
Here is picture of nice fresh white queen cells drawn from fresh white foundationless comb.

Here are the more standard type, some times they blend in.

Incidentally, these two cells were chewed out by a queen from the other side of the frame.  That's life.

Finally, this is the base of worker comb drawn in a foundationless frame.  I took this picture to demonstrate the concept of Housel Positioning, an idea some follow.  Basically, you place the frames to the Y in the base of the cells is right side up facing away from the center of the hive and upside down facing the center.  No, I'm not going to be defending the practice.

Right now, I'm in a situation where my virgin queens have hatched (even saw one) but have not yet been able to mate do to the weather.  Fortunately, it is supposed to be in the low seventies tomorrow, so they will get their first chance.  From now on in, we have to build up to have enough frames of brood to start the four new hives what will house four new queens when they arrive in May.