Birth of a Honey Bee

Went into the hives this afternoon just to see how they were doing.  At first I was concerned that there was some robbing going on as there was a lot of activity at the entrance.  But I think it was just a beautiful day and the bees were real busy.  More "new beekeeper anxiety", I guess.
The visit went quite well.  Was going to try it without any smoke even but after I opened up the first hive and removed the feeder, I had a bee start a staring match with me.  I decided then I better bring in the big guns...

The bees have begun to move up into the second story of the hive.  The middle frames are drawn out and I can see eggs and larvae so the queen even is spending time up there.  There was also a good amount of pollen and what looked like honey.  Most of the frames in the top section though were still quite bare.  I think I might make up another batch of syrup to feed them...that might at least help them draw out the frames quicker.  Before doing so, I am going to clean up the feeders some as they are getting pretty nasty.

I did not locate the queen in either hive but now that I know she is there, I don't need to find her every time.  I found plenty of eggs that must have been just laid recently...tinier than a grain of rice but still quite visible.  Some frames had a strange brown color to them and were pretty bare.  I wondered what that was all about until I saw the following:

You can see the brownish color of the empty cells.  At the bottom, the capped cells are capped brood.  There are baby bees in those cells.  And if you look close, you can see several where the cappings are being eaten away by the bees working their way out.  The next several pictures show the birth of a honey bee.  Happens hundreds of times every day in the hives...but hey, it was my first time witnessing the event.