Lots of Summer Photos

 Hi everyone. Happy Thursday.

I'm home again after a couple of days away in Western Massachusetts. I grew up only a little over an hour away from the Berkshires and never had really explored them much at all. I am making up for it now I guess. My friend and I had a wonderful trip. I haven't had time to go through my photos since I just got home last evening, but I will have some photos to share of our adventure.

I thought today I would do a low key  post and share a few photos from some adventures I had in the past few weeks. These are not from this week's M-W roadtrip to the Berkshires in Massachusetts. 

I'll start with a few photos I snapped with my phone when I was away for my niece's wedding in Maine . These are what I discovered on a morning walk along the road where our rental was.

I really liked the hay bale in the upper window and how it adds so much interest to the front of the barn.

Too there was a fence cutting off the  face of the bovine looking at me. I'm just not tall enough to be able to look down on him over the fence.

And this bump sign should have said hole, and it was a big one too.

And here's a few photos from the adventures in my yard and gardens, starting with this sunflower seed that somehow made it into one of my deck potted plants. I let it grow, since all the sunflower seeds I planted in my  garden either got eaten  or nipped off once the plant started to grow.

 This Eastern Tiger Swallowtail butterfly completely ignored me so I was able to snap close up photos.

My yummy blackberries are starting to ripen. 

The bees are buzzing everywhere in the gardens, and they are busy in the hive too.

 I like how you can see the smoke from my smoker on this one (from when I opened the hive one day). You use the smoke as it helps mask the bees alarm pheromones.

I'll also answer a question CJ asked me quite a while back. She wanted to know how you tell what is what inside the hive on the frames where the bees live.

Honeycomb is white.  Brood comb (the babies) is more yellow. At first the brood is not capped, and then as the larva grows, then it becomes capped. In this next photo most of the comb is yellow brood comb. You can see the white honeycomb on the top right corner.

 This peanut shaped comb (above) could be a new queen comb. It could also be burr or bridge comb that is growing off the "grid" of the frames. Wherever there is extra and  enough empty space in a hive, bees will put some comb there.

Newer brood comb isn't quite as yellow. If you look carefully you can see the uncapped brood to the right side of the photo. They look like little comma shaped worms almost.

Lots of brood comb.

Honeycomb is forming on the top of the frame in this next photo. 

You can see a bit of uncapped honey right in the middle of this next photo.

And more brood comb. The little pinpoint looking indent on each hexagon is a good way to tell it is brood.

More honey making.

Here in this next photo is some more capped honeycomb with some brood comb slightly out of focus in the lower right corner. You can really see how white this honeycomb is.

And here's your test. In this last photo, is it honeycomb or brood com? 

If you scroll down through the white space gap, I'll give you the answer to your test question. Hopefully everyone gets a 100%.

And since it is Thursday, I am  linking up to Rain's Art and Dinner Date.  This week her theme was Figure Drawings, which as you can tell, I never had time to do. 

Thanks for visiting. And have a wonderful rest of the week.

And the answer is: honeycomb.