Hello Bee Community, I’m a beginner here. I opened up my hive for inspection today, and I’m unsure about what I’m seeing on a couple of the frames. The capping’s appear to be sunken, the 1st frame picture seemed to have the most sunken capping’s, is this maybe AFB or some other kind of disease? Also, I scraped any irregular combing off the top/bottom parts of the frames and there was a creamy white substance that came from the comb? The Nuc that we installed was well/overly established in the Nuc box. I appreciate any feedback
I’m not seeing anything to be concerned about. The milky liquid is what squashed healthy larvae looks like. If you can show us a close-up of the sunken caps that you’re worried about, that would be good.
From my observations, worker brood caps can go slightly concaved shortly before the bee emerges.
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Hello Katherine, welcome to the wonderful world of beekeeping!
Starting with the first pic, the creamy white liquid is from cells of brood - bee larvae that got squished as you scraped the excess comb off.
I didn’t see any particularly sunken caps on the frames in your pics. I wonder if what you’re seeing are honey cells that are in the arcs around the edges and upper corners? The honey arc on older brood comb can look darker and kind of polished, from all the traffic.
I also saw worker brood and some drone brood.
A bigger question is whether you saw eggs, young open larvae and any queen cells?
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Hi Eva, Thanks so much. That’s a relief to hear that the frames look normal, and yes, I think I was probably looking at the older and higher traffic areas. Thanks so much for the feedback.
I did see larvae, but I don’t think I saw any queen bee cells. I did quite a bit of reading and watching videos, but actually getting into the hive is kind of an intense experience. I’m so glad that I took pictures and could ask here for guidance 
I still haven’t been able to spot the queen, and I’m hoping that she wasn’t injured during the inspection. I had found quite a bit of new and uneven combing in the roofline of the hive, that is where I saw most of the larvae, and so I’m guessing (in afterthought) that the queen was probably actively laying within the new combing. I brushed as many of the bees off that combing as possible before I pried and scraped that combing off of the roofline, so I hope she made it back into the hive? If she didn’t will the bees start preparing a new queen?
I added a couple pics, do you think any of the protruding cells may be developing queen cells?
Thanks again
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You’re very welcome!
Hopefully so, and now you will probably remember to bring a receptacle for excess comb cleanup and to look carefully before scraping. Each experience helps you prepare for next time.
Yes, they’ll make an emergency queen using worker eggs or young-enough larvae and build queen cells in the midst of the brood area.
The protruding ones are drone (male) cells. Worker brood is flatter and smaller in circumference. Queen cells are entirely different! Like a peanut hanging vertically on the comb (or along the bottom edge of swarm cells) except tapered instead of bulbous and the surface texture is very similar. It would be very helpful to do some reading and/or take a class, by the way.
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