Honey extractor for retirement and nuc report

The people in Urgent Care threw a retirement party for me a couple of days ago.  It was at the Cypress Hotel and was very nice.  They gave me a 4-frame honey extractor, a very generous gift.

The extractor on its stand

Looking inside.  The mesh cage spins around fast spraying out the honey into the barrel.

This morning I took the captured swarm over to Bruce and Gregg's.  Last night when all the bees had returned to the nuc I had taped over the entrance.  We dumped the bees into their box, put in some frames and closed it up.  Sadly, Gregg called me this afternoon to report that all the bees had left.  Bees abscond when there is something they don't like in their environment.  Perhaps they'll make it until spring, but I think it's unlikely as swarms this late in the year have a poor chance of surviving.

Mites, nucs and escape board

Two days ago I did a sugar shake count in hives 1&2.  The results, 23 mites in #1 and 27 in #2 were way too high.  Yesterday I put mite-away quick strips in all three Langstroth hives (only one strip in #3).
The legs of the hive stands are in cans with motor oil in them, to keep ants out.  One of the cans had developed a leak.  Yesterday, when I had the hives open with only the bottom brood box on the stand (to put in the quick strips), I used my car jack to raise the stand high enough that I could slip a plastic container under the leaky can.

Down side of escape board

Close-up of maze

Up side of escape board with spacer strips added

I built a bee escape board.  This is used as a one-way valve to get bees off of the honey supers when harvesting.  They aren't very expensive to buy, but I wanted to save shipping costs.  Besides, it's fun to do it myself.  After it was built, I realized it needed more space between it and the honey super so I added spacer strips.

While I was finishing the escape board this morning, Mark Lemon called to say that his crew had spotted a swarm in Watsonville.  I had one 5-frame nuc box available, but only three frames, two plastic and one of my so-called foundationless frames.  I added two drone frames to make five.  I met Mark in Watsonville (after a couple of wrong turns on my part) and he led me to the swarm.  It was in a bush and about football size.  I got the empty nuc box under the swarm and shook the branch.  To my surprise, there was a hand-sized piece of comb in the middle of the swarm.  We know they were there for at least 3 days.  I expect that they hadn't found a home and were building an exposed hive.  In any case, I put the piece of comb in the nuc box, too.  I shook more bees off the branch in order to be certain I had the queen, waited about 1/2 hour for more bees to go into the box and then put the frames in.  I waited another 15 minutes, put the top on and taped it down.  It's now sitting in the backyard under the orange tree.  Gregg Polubinsky has expressed interest in starting another hive, so I'll give him the bees if he wants them.

Captured swarm nuc in its temporary, I hope, location

Happy new homeowners