Free at last, free at last

We went out right after breakfast to do a check to see if the queen had been freed from her cage. It was cool and damp with the forecast to only become wetter the next couple days, so we decided we would do this as quickly as possible. We didn't take smoke, since I figured the coolness would subdue them enough. The plan was simple--take off the lid, remove the feeding can, take off the box surrounding the feeding can and set that on the ground. Take off the top of the two hive bodies, with inner lid in place and set it on the empty box on the ground. Then lift up the bottom hive body from the base to have access at the queen cage. This would interfere much less than removing frames. We figured when we saw the cage it would either be covered with bees and we would have to try to remove the candy ourselves and free her or it would be empty.
Success--it was empty. We didn't risk bothering them any more with the cold to try to locate the queen--save that for a warm day a week or two from now. Otherwise, things looked good, and even with the cool weather a steady stream of bees was flying in and out, so they look like busy little bees. Which reminds me of an ad my mom saw on The Weather Channel about Billy Bee honey. I check out the Billy Bee web site, which is a Canadian company making honey. Funny little jingo, and watch what happens to your cursor when you go to their page. Cute. Check out the video ads. http://www.billybee.com/en/index.html