Soon after we introduced Queen bee Aurora to her new
box and empty frames of foundation, I got an email from Tina
and Thomas Keller, our advisers in the Aurora project. They were worried that the bees wouldn’t be able to draw out
comb fast enough to keep Aurora fully occupied in her egg-laying business. Bees
don’t draw out comb so fast at the end of the summer.

Tina and Thomas own a honey extractor, a contraption that spins the honey
from the comb and leaves behind empty cells that the bees can refill as they see
fit. Tina emailed that they were going to be extracting honey from some deep
frames.

“We could bring you some of the extracted deep frames for
Aurora and exchange them for some of the new frames you guys have there.  That
would help a lot in not slowing down the growth of this hive.”

Thanks to Tina and Thomas, we were able to swap out 5 empty
frames for 5 sticky frames that had lovely comb built out on both sides of the
foundation.

A week later, when we checked her, we could see that Aurora
had been very busy, and had filled all of those frames with:

Nice pearly white eggs (see those little blurry white lines inside the cells?)

Andpretty little larvae floating in royal jelly.