Drone Cells and Hover Flies

The weather has been rainy and in the 50s and 60s all week. BUT, it was nice enough today to check the bees.  We tried not to mess with them too much, but it looked like they were doing fine and working hard. My queen has been laying lots of drone eggs. The drones are the male bees. They don't do much but mate with queens. You can tell the drone cells because they are bigger and more mounded. See in the blue circles? They are sticking out more than the capped cells around them.

My hive also had tons of new eggs and so did Matt's hive. Another thing that was interesting was that Matt's bees made more burr comb but this time, it was a different color than the last time. Check this out:

We are trying to figure out why the wax is more yellow and one theory that Matt came up with is that they are eating more stored honey and/or pollen instead of sugar syrup. It's a mystery to me!

Here is the burr comb.

Here is a good picture of the hive tool that Matt is holding. 

Lots of things are blooming in the garden like Chamomile which is very popular with the bees and lots of other flying insects. There were a bunch of these flying insects which looked like bees, but then I thought they might be flies. It turns out they are Eristalis Tenax, a kind of hover fly but they mimic the look of bees. 

Eristalis Tenax

I also want to say that I never thought bees were cute before, but now I do. 

Here are some close-ups from today:

This bee is smaller than the end of my pinkie.

These bees are having a meeting.

On Matt's shirt.

On the strap that keeps my sleeve tight.