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Healthy Brood Frame | My bees have beautifully developed this brood frame in one of my own hives. Here you can see me holding the frame up to eye level for a detailed inspection. The close-up picture below demonstrates a healthy distribution of honey and brood cells. The honey is stored in the pale yellow-colored, capped cells around the top and sides. This brood frame honey is for the bees' own food; it will not be extracted and bottled. |
A brood frame with the queen | The more yellowish cells toward the center and bottom of this frame are brood cells. The hollow, uncapped brood cells contain eggs and larvae, and if you look closely, you can see the white, grub-like bee larvae in some of the uncapped cells. The capped brood cells (toward the center) contain pupae in the final stages of development. They will soon emerge as adult bees and assume their duties in the colony. In the above picture, you can even see the queen, marked with a yellow dot on her thorax, in the center area of the frame. |
Workers tending the brood | In this photo, you can see a portion of a frame that has already had brood mature and emerge, which makes the cell coloration darker. The empty cells that contained the brood are now being reused. The queen has laid eggs in the cells, as you can see in the close-ups below: |
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Honeybees and Their Life
Inspecting the Frames
Opening and Inspecting the Hive