Beginning February Tasks

I completed my prototype for a hive weighing machine, and have a few more adjustments to make. Its based on someone else's idea, but I think (hope) its a simpler and improved one. I put a lot of time into it- lots of drawings- which is fun for me. It's basically three fingers, that tuck under a hive, and you pull up the middle one with a lever arm, which lifts the hives through some pullys, which are connected by cable to a digital scale. It still has some bugs to work out. I don't even know if it will work.

In addition, I scraped, repaired, primed, and painted all my supers, and all the frames have been repaired and cleaned.  I haven't replaced foundation yet, on the ones that need it, but that will be next. There are about 90 frames to do. This took a lot of time too- lots of weekends, but its satisfying to have it done. I counted supers, there are 34 inside, that i painted, and 27 outside still on hives. I wasn't able to get the hives down to 2 for lots of hives, so there are more than I'd meant to have outside. The picture is of the cleaned ones with fresh new paint on them.
I've been trying to fix all the supers with tops that are not flat, or that are broken. Id also like to figure out a way to square up the ones that are un-square. This is something that caused me problems when harvesting, and bees could find their way into the supers I had already pulled and cleared  of bees- if there was any sort of hole, or if a super wasn't square and left a gap, they'd start robbing, and I'd have to start all over again, with mean bees. I swore I'd fix the equipment when this happened, so thats what I am doing.
The bees seem very active- and its been warm. I pulled out bottom boards today and found-in most- big mounds of wet sugar, suryup in some places. Seems like once they chew through the paper, they just let the sugar fall. Or, are they dropping it to the bottom on purpose? I am not sure what's going on, or why its so wet. Is that just condensation dripping down? Or are they making syrup somehow and its dripping down?
In any case, though easy to do, putting dry sugar into the hives seemed to make quite a sticky mess, that I'd like to avoid in the future. Maybe this needs to be fondant, and maybe its more on a board on top, which they can get up to. I don't know that I see the point of the paper.
Yellow jackets still around- I think that means there's a big hive that overwintered somewhere near.
Bees out getting water all morning, he lawn is covered with them. It was sunny, but it is now getting colder- maybe a little snow tomorrow.