No hive check and drones!

Sunday, overcast, mid 70°s, no hive opening today because I don’t need to…can see through the entrance on the back side or via photo taken from bottom of hive. Bar 10 comb appears to be fully drawn and bee mass slants up to the top at bar 13. Although I was concerned about there being little comb drawn for a couple of weeks, I assumed all is well in that the bees know what they are doing and I can trust them to manage their own hive. And, if they don’t draw comb so fast, then they won’t put in more brood and overpopulate the hive. So I went searching once again and found that, indeed, the bees draw as much comb as they need for all to stand on. From http://forum.beemaster.com/index.php?topic=23853.0  Wait until the brood hatches and increased amount of bees will most likely make the hive go back to comb building.  Bees only build comb under foot, meaning if there is space in the hive unoccupied by bees there will be no comb found there.  It is population that dictates comb building not size  of honey flow.  If there is not enough bees to mandate the manufacture of more comb the bees will go to backfilling the brood chamber until enough brood hatches out to require more comb building.

And more pictures, this time of drones—the big guys! And from this we know the first brood is hatching because there were no drones in the initial package of bees way back in mid-April, plus I saw cell caps on the sticky board last week. Notice the large bee on the wall above the entrance and one large bee at the entrance...both drones who only eat and fly out to mate with queens in a special mating area in the sky. Come winter, they are kept out of the hive because...that's what bees do. If you want more drone info check out  http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Beekeeping/Drone_Bee 
There is a continuous quiet buzzing in the hive and a sweet pleasant odor close to the hive. I visit daily so they know my scent and know that I'm okay and that they can like me fine and won't attack...particularly when I come busting in, removing the roof and messing with their propolis seals between the bars, pushing them off their comb, etc. etc.