There are a few ways I might try to handle this: 1, place the medium frames directly in a deep box. The bees will build off the bottom of the frames though. 2, place a deep over the mediums and wait for the queen to move up, then remove the medium. If your having trouble getting the bees to build comb place one or two of the frames you want them to build in the middle of the cluster. I’m a fan of foundationless frames. I use starter strips and right now they fill a frame in less than a week.

I leave the board in year round. Air still flows through there With it in and I can inspect the mite drop.

Thank you. I am enjoying planning my new yard and will need to protect the young trees from deer. There are 7 consistently chilling in my lawn and taking out my shrubs. For anyone else with this same interest, I wanted to offer this information Chris Ness shared with me that provides zone maps of bee forage by bloom date and species: https://honeybeenet.gsfc.nasa.gov/Honeybees/Forage.htm

This is really cool. My thought is that there might be more than 1 cluster; the main one being in the upper box and a smaller one near that streak. Either that or the red streak in the lower box is the cluster and the heat is escaping between the two boxes making the larger heat signature overall. The more I think about it, the more I'm inclined to believe all the red in the upper area is just escaping heat from the break of the two boxes. I'd like to see more of these from different angles, or different boxes. It is very interesting. Thanks for sharing.