Since the rooster and hens no longer are allowed free range of the yard (due to their love for all things vegetable garden), we are trying to make sure that their coop environment is as interesting and stimulating as possible. Inside their coop they always had a two level perch for roosting, and outside they had a single branch style roost both for hanging out and to help with getting into and out of the coop itself. To give them more options, we now have added a second inside perch (and now the three big girls perch on one side of the coop, and Expresso and Lena perch on the new roost on the other side). The best addition, however, is the new outside branch perch. It is higher than the existing perch, and can be reached from the ground if they are willing to fly up, or from the other perch with a good hop. They love it. Expresso now chooses that as his crowing perch (starting at 4:50 am by the way), and the others hop up and down all day long. It is a little thing, but I think it goes a long way towards enhancing their quality of life.
We finally extracted the tiny (6 lbs) bit of honey from the last of the super frames, and here you see the bees as they clean up every last drop of honey in the basins we used. We let them clean up first, then we wash and rinse them. However, they way the bees clean up, no rinsing would be necessary if you didn't mind little bee footprints.
