[Needo]

I was video taping my self doing a hive inspection and I noticed several places where I mistook capped brood for capped honey. In the video it looks just like the other pictures of comb. Everything is pretty easy to identify. However when I am looking at the comb with my naked eye, I see very little differentiation. About the only thing I can spot and identify is pollen and find my queen. Lately, my queens are never where I am expecting to find them.

 

[Chemguy]

The capped honey in my hive usually looks much lighter than the capped brood. It also usually appears like it is 'frosted.' But sometimes it looks just like capped brood. I saw this just yesterday, when probing at what looked like a cell with a pinhole in the cap. I thought it was foulbrood at first, but when I tore into the cells all that was there was honey, from cap to foundation.

I'm not quite sure why this has happened, but have a theory that it is due to recycling of wax. The honey in question was in a queenless split that was made toward the beginning of the flow in my area, and was some of the last honey to be capped. Most of the bees in that split emerged over two weeks ago at the earliest.

 

[Acebird]

Lauri has the best photos on BS. You should be able to tell capped honey from capped brood cells very easily. I can't find a queen because bees move all over the place but I have no trouble distinguishing brood from honey.