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.

crush and strain 2019

We worked in the middle of the kitchen floor to contain the sticky clean-up.  Imagine a compact vertical stack - from the bottom up: 

• brown paper
• food safe 5 gallon bucket
• combcapper
• medium frame of capped honey. 

Sagar and Quin (co-workers) cut comb with a paring knife from foundationless frames. Comb was crushed in the bucket using a 2 inch Plastic Joint Knife attached to a pole.

Crushed comb was poured into the strainer bottler and left to sit for a few days so that foam (tiny air bubbles) can rise before bottling.

After cutting away honey comb, frames are returned to the Storage Tote. Over-night, honey dripped into the Tote and were captured too. Sticky frames were stacked outside in a location away from the hives.  Bees assisted with the final honey clean-up of sticky frames - a circle of life scene which reminds me of sky burial.

In the 3rd photo, I used a slow shutter iPhone app.  Crawling bee behavior looks like white dots while flying behavior looks like brown lines (classic multiple exposure).

slow shutter iPhone app

Reddit had a great bee yard photo using a slow shutter iPhone app.  After deleting some awful first tries, I was able to make the app work for me. At 63℉, the bees are active and returning with pollen.  Crawling bee behavior looks like white lines while flying behavior looks like classic multiple exposure.  Look closely and you'll find the bottom edge of the bee cozy at the top of the image.