A funny thing happened when I was inspecting today. When I put the inner cover back on Proteus, all the bees headed for the opening in the center like cows going back to the barn at the end of the day. If you click on the picture below and enlarge it, you will see how they are all heading for the opening....I've not seen this happen in the past year. This apparently is quite a close group of bees - they can't stand to be apart!
It's always hard to know what beekeepers are talking about until you have the experience. In the picture below in the center is an obvious drone. Notice how much bigger he is than the girls around him - useless, of course, unless he gets to mate with a queen, but big and imposing, nonetheless!
As I look at the picture this year (with one more year under my belt 3/24/2008) I wonder if the queen were on the inner cover. That doesn't happen often, but if she were and when I put the inner cover back on the hive, that meant that the queen returned to the hive, that would explain the march of bees through the inner cover in such a determined way.
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