Beekeeping day

Calm warm and sunny. Ideal for checking that all is well in my 4 beehives.
I took several shots of the brood comb but I think this shows the various stages of development quite well. It's not something most people ever see .
The eggs are laid by the queen and stand upright in the cell glued to the bottom.(see bottom of photo and up right hand side.) These hatch into larvae after 3 days ( see mid bottom and central for tiniest larvae and ranging up in size to the bigger larvae in upper left of photo) The larvae are fed by worker bees and you can see a fluid in the smaller larvae cells. On day 9 the cells are capped with wax from the wax glands of the workers (see top Left ) The new bee hatches out on about day 21, first chewing a hole in the capping . The cell is then cleaned out and polished on the inside using a sticky substance called propolis . It is basically tree resin and is an antiseptic. The clean cell is then ready for the next egg. On the right of the photo you can see stores of yellow pollen. I'm afraid the only bee is rather out of focus in the left hand bottom corner .
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