This is a picture of Rosamund, taken  Monday, April 16, slightly less than 4 weeks after we installed our package.  I could see a couple of capped brood cells (looked like drone cells to me) and some open pollen cells.

This evening, I counted bars, peeking in the windows, and both hives have 10 bars occupied.  Lucretia isn’t quite as full as Rosamund, but she is catching up in a hurry.  This looks like they are drawing down about 2.5 combs per week.

I think that’s pretty impressive.  They have no foundation, just a rub of beeswax on the bar to get them started.

We had been leaving the bottom board on to help them combat the cold nights, but this morning there were little groups outside both hives trying to cool off.  I took the bottom boards off and everyone went back in the house.  I’m always surprised at how much pollen gets dropped.  (Most is yellow but there is a decent sprinkling of orange going on.  There were bright orange saddle bags going in as I watched, too.)

Looking up at the bars as I counted, the spacer bar looked very much like a small bar.  That looks like an invitation to trouble to me.  I’m afraid they will try to draw comb down from it.  I’m thinking what I might do  is take out the 24th bar and use the spacer to move the last 10 bars apart, but not leave it in.  The bars have been packed so tight that they haven’t gotten into the top of the hives, yet.  And this has kept them from doing anything crazy inside the roof.

I have a couple of friends with power tools.  Maybe I can get some help creating spacers that are more like I think they should be.  You know.  NOT extra projections to attach comb to.