Happy Bees!

I am incredibly happy to report that the new bee hive is thriving.  With the amount of pollen and blooming everything around I am not surprised.  Even though I understand the importance of pollen and that without it humans would not exist (no pollen, more importantly if there were no bees there would be no pollination and no food) it is not my friend due to allergies.  To bees however it is happiness.  It is gold (literally and figuratively).
After one month of leaving it alone and not opening it once I added another brood box onto the stack, so it is now 2 high.  When I opened the hive it was doing very well.  Lots of bees making comb, nectar (which will eventually become honey) and more baby bees!  Once they fill both of these boxes the next step is to add on supers where they will make lots of honey.

Here the bees hang out on the inside hive cover after I removed the top cover and gave them a few puffs of smoke to calm them.

This is what the hive looks like with 2 brood boxes on it sans outer cover.

With outer cover...

And here the bees are checking out their newly expanded digs.  The second brood box has been a couple weeks now and it is amazing to me how much air traffic there is to and from the hive.  It is nature at its finest and I could watch it all day.  It's also really cool at dusk just as the sun is setting many bees will hang out on the front porch to cool off a bit.