A closer inspection.

It looked like the bees in our hive had completed or were building comb throughout the hive. This seemed to be confirmed by looking through the observation window. As nectar flow begins earlier in California, we decided to check to see if there was any honeycomb ready to harvest.

This is a picture of Ryan starting our hive check. He is carefully prying the top bar away from from the one next to it.

Here's a picture of  me performing the  same task.

We needed to cut the brace comb that was attaching the comb to the sides of the hive. You can see the knife cutting comb here.

Just a fun picture of me holding the knife.

Ryan is holding one of the combs that we inspected. There is capped honey cells in the top third of the comb. The rest is brood comb where the queen had laid some eggs. This comb had a combination of honey cells, worker bee cells, and drone cells. The honey cells are capped with a whitish wax. The brood cells are capped with an orangish wax and pollen combination cover. The drones cells are slightly larger and have a domed cap.

Here is a better view with the comb resting on the top bar. It is upside down.

This is  a close up of the section that was predominantly drone cells. Practically all of the bees in this picture are drones that have recently come our of their cells.

There weren't any comb that were completely filled with capped honey. We found one that we thought was just honey at the top with no brood on the bottom. We harvested this comb and got about one half of a cup of honey. It was thick, light colored, and tasted great. We cut off the bottom of the empty comb and I saved it to show my next year's kindergarten class.

Much to our surprise, the queen had laid eggs in this comb, too. I noticed developing larva three days later. The eggs were so small that we did not see them. Some of the larva had died and had turned black.

What we learned:

1. We did not notice any Chalkbrood 'mummies'. 
2. Our hive is healthy.
3. The queen is still busy laying eggs to build up the hive's population.
4. It has a healthy number of drones.
5. We do not have any surplus honey to harvest, yet.

Please post a comment, if you are reading this. I'm wondering how many 'bots' and how many people are reading these posts. 

Thanks for your comments.