The senior hive is bursting at the seams, so we stopped feeding them, and I went ahead and added a shallow super (a short box full of frames) for them to start storing honey. The metal grate, above, is called a queen excluder. It went just below the super to keep the queen out of the honey box. Plenty of room for her to lay eggs down below. Most folks don't want baby bees floating about in their honey.
Eight of the frames are new ones with a sheet of foundation for them to build their own honey comb. The middle frame is a frame from last year with one side full of honey that we collected last year and kept in the freezer all winter. The honey on that middle frame will entice them up through the excluder and get them moving on the rest of the frames. Before you know it we'll be harvesting honey.
The feeder board and mason jar go into storage. The hive is now topped with an inner cover and the usual outer cover and rock.
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