Thanks to a very troubling issue with my hounds, I had to spend a lot of time inside on this otherwise beautiful day. In my continuing effort to look for the positive, the one bonus of this day was that I had a lot of time to review various bee literature online and read some of the forum posts. This was extremely informative and I wanted to make this post to remind me of my goals for next week (yes, I have already decided that waiting two weeks is too long!)

1. Open each hive from the opposite side that I have been working them
2. Take a good look at the capped brood pattern of the queen
3. Be sure to look for any queen cells. It is highly unlikely that the bees are looking to make a new queen, but I keep forgetting to look!
4. Make a note of exactly which frames have brood (see if I can see Drone brood on the outside), which have capped honey and which have pollen.

Finally, if I have not done so already, give both hives a third off a piece of pollen and put the rest in the fridge. I also need to consider putting my feeders on top of them, as it appears that this is the best way to get some fast growth in the young, small hives (of which I have two.)