March 13th swarm

This small March 13th swarm did not outgrow their 5-frame home, but moisture management was not optimum and the old wood nucleus box was failing - see the new hole in the lower right corner of the brown box.  The bees are very calm, I moved the frames into a new 8-frame home using no smoke. These photos are taken hours later and all the bees attached to their old home have moved on.

Their new 8-frame home has loads of ventilation:

• Hive stand is 13 inches tall.
• Bottom board is screened and I'm not using a counting board.   
• Inner cover has a ventilation notch.

My intention is to add deep frames of capped honey in August.

record hive sound with OSBeehives

OSBeehives sells a solar powered in-hive detector which connects to WiFi and your smartphone.  A successful crowdfunding project, I used their free phone app to record the sound of my hives. Laying on my back, holding the iPhone beneath the screened bottom board, I made a sound recording of each hive.  The app analyzes the sound and categorizes the hive health into one of six states.