A few (2-3) SHBs seen in all three hives
Brood from the white plastic hive.
More brood, and the "empty" cells are hatched?
Queens are all in place.
Bad picture, (and $5 mis-matched paint). This is the nuc bottom board I made from lumber yard scraps (more later), and a few scraps of 1/2 plywood. I will staple in screen when I get it.
No dados required with the free lumber yard scrap. And there is room to slide in a piece of wood or plastic under the screen. Note the screen is yet to be installed. Couldn't find 1/8" hardware cloth locally.
This is a piece of 4' lumber used by the mills to hold the strapping when binding a load of plywood or other lumber. The steel strapping fits in the channel and keeps it from marring the product. The lumber yard gave me all I wanted after buying a piece of 1/2" plywood. Some pieced were basically dripping resin, others where nice and dry and straight. The piece here has one side ripped down a bit so that when when the plywood scraps are inserted, there is a not such a large gap under the frames (when set on the bottom board). I don't really know if this is necessary, but I was trying to copy dimensions from other bottom boards.
Here are the plans for the 5-frame nucs that I built. I found them on Beesource.com. I now have 12 of these, and basically only bought a sheet of 15/32" CDX. The ends (handles) are from the free strapping guide lumber scraps mentioned above, ripped in half. This makes a nice size hand hold with a notch for the fingers do grab. On three of the boxes I made permanent bottoms by cutting a notch in the bottom for an entrance, using some 1/8" hardboard I had laying around as a shim to get the bee-space right, and nailed a piece of plywood to the bottom. Once sheet of plywood wasn't enough for these three bottoms, but I had some scrap pieces big enough.
I haven't decided on the tops yet, but I'm going to price those sheets of blue building insulation as tops, with a brick above. My nephew used this material to make model airplane wings a few years ago, and I remember he set up a simple wire jig (and a battery) to make a foam cutter. I think I could easily rig up a jig that will shape it like a telescoping lid, insuring that water doesn't run in the hive. This may be too much trouble. I simple migratory lid may be the ticket. Whatever the case, I want to be able to feed through the top (credit to John P. at Georgiabees.com.
With only three hives, I have time for woodworking and such. So I figure that, while I don't really need all these nucs at the moment, its a good time to figure out what works, what doesn't, what to worry about, what not to, what is efficient and what isn't. Hopefully, later when the bees themself are taking a lot of time due to expansion, I won't have to waste time stressing about what can be built easily vs what to spend money on.
Here is yet another supercedure(?) cell. Should I be worried?
I didn't notice this when inspecting, but I noticed it when looking at the pictures. When looking at the picture of the entire frame, I swore I was looking at a swarm cell. Looking more closely, I guess it isn't. I would assure that new colonies are not very prone to swarming. Definitely not because of lack of space.
BTW, I have found that when working alone, taking photos is was a pain. I have settled on a way to take pictures when solo. I have my camera set to max-gazillion pixels, so that I can simply crop the good parts and still have good resolution. I set up a lawn chair facing the sun. I then set up my camera on a tripod, facing the chair but not blocking sun, as close as possible and still take a picture that is the width of a frame. I note some mark or line on the chair that is the center of the picture frame. When I want to take a picture of a frame or something, I simply set one end of the frame on the armrest of the chair (and centered in front of my "X" on the chair) and press the shutter. My camera is set on autofocus and autoflash.
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