New supers; varroa mite check

Yesterday, bought two shallow supers, and a honey gate (spigot sized to allow honey to flow freely and which can be turned off without drips). This will be installed in a food-grade bucket in which will be placed the honey sieve and into which will drain the extractor. Yesterday, painted the supers with a coat of latex primer and a coat of white exterior latex paint; will give one more paint-coat today. This morning, put together the frames, and have become pretty fast at doing this (assembly line on the kitchen table; electric drill...) Will place drone-foundation in these frames, mainly because that's what's on hand; it's easier to extract, because the cells are larger; we may find to our grief why this is a specialty product even in the very narrow specialty-product beekeeper-supply world. Lovely day for bees yesterday, cool and bright; they were flying well into the early evening; then lots of humming from the yellow hive, busy fanning to evaporate.

RE the varroa mite check using file folders slathered with Crisco and placed for 24 hours on cookie sheets below the screen bottom, the red hive turned up no mites; found what seem to be three on the yellow hive's sheet. The Young Beekeeper will look at these with the strong magnifying glass--all I can see is tiny red shiny ovals. He may be able to see the ferocious mouth and horrid little legs and confirm their identity.