The end of part 1...intermission

Today was the day I started the waiting game officially. I havent seen any bee a activity for about a week now and we had three strikes after three nights if seeing no bees in the hive at night. So I took down the bee hive today and took out the tubes that contained some sort of occlusion.

There were 37 tubes filled. Of these 37, there were about 75% of them full, end to end and the rest were partially full.

Found this pollen clump in one of the tubes, almost like a kernel of corn.

This was the first tube setup I used by cutting paper straws on the long axis. I decided these three weren't going to move on into storage so we had a science class in the garage explaining the building of the cells and the cocoons.

Going from left to right in the tube, we see first the mud cap, then a pollen bunch, larva, and then another cap. This series continues from one end to the other. If you notice the small little black spots...that's bee poop!