Mite check and sea salt

I have been needing to do a mites check so today I purchased a corrugated plastic sign from Ace hardware and cut it to size and sprayed it w/ pam cooking spray on one side. I only had garlic pam, I hope the bees don't mind. You can see the white board sticking out from under my screen board. I'm hoping this will upset the black widow as well and that she will leave. I think a piece of screen is needed to keep further yucky things out after her eviction.

Tomorrow I will remove it and see what has fallen in a 24 hour period.

Also I put a piece of 250 million year old sea salt on the landing board yesterday. I did this because my good friend, chiropractor and mentor of sorts, she doesn't keep bees though, said she thought they would like some salt. It rained yesterday so some of the salt crystal leached onto the landing board. They seem to like it. The top picture is of my landing board w/ a crystal and the pink 250 million year old salt.

The second and third picture are of the bees sucking up some of the salt the leached on to the landing board.

The last picture is of two bees bringing in pollen. If you look closely you will see the bee entering the hive has a light grayish yellow pollen and the bee flying in has a brighter yellow pollen. I wish I knew more about what was in bloom here now.