Interesting bottom board "muck"

I took some pictures when I took the plastic board out from under the hive after the winter. The board had a pretty good covering of "muck" which I decided to have a good look at before I cleaned it up and put it away for the spring/summer. I found a bunch of interesting stuff, remains from the Api Life mite treatment, pollen, some dead mites, a bee leg or two and wax flakes. The picture below shows some of this, the green fluffy stuff is Api Life, the yellow and orange blobs are pollen - but the things that fascinated me are the neat round brown seeds. They seem to be millet seed, and indeed some were even starting to sprout - but where did they come from? I wondered if there had been a mouse or something in the hive over winter but I could see no evidence. Right now it remains a mystery :-)


The next photo was more interesting to the kids (and me), it shows the wax flakes the bees produce as well as a few bee body parts.