Busy bees

These are the bees that my beekeeping friend Louise and I rescued from a salvage yard. They are a tiny colony that built a nest inside of a brake drum. We rehomed them into this top-bar hive which Noah and I built out of some scrap lumber. We used the Les-is-more plans found on the bee-mindful.com website with modifications to suite our supplies. I made rescue bars out of a piece of closet shelving to preserve the comb these bees had already started to build. The bees seem to be doing well here and appear to like the hive. This design has done well even given the 100+ F temps we've been experiencing here in the south eastern USA. When I place my hand inside the unoccupied portion of the hive it is quite cool compared to the ambient temperature outside.