Inspection update and #1 is queenright

The apiary this afternoon

There are two inspections to report, one two weeks ago (May 3) and one done yesterday and today.
Hive #3- The split is developing into a good colony.  On the 3rd, two of the foundationless frames had been completely drawn.  The queen was on one of them with capped brood.  A couple of other frames also had capped brood.  The brood ball was off center so I shifted everything over one frame.  Eight frames were drawn, so I added a second deep box. 

Yesterday, Sophie inspected #3 with me.  There was still a fair amount of larvae and capped brood, but nothing was happening in the top brood box.  Sophie did get to see brood, larvae, hatching worker, the queen, drones, workers doing the waggle dance, stored pollen and honey.

Hive #2- Two weeks ago, there was no activity in top brood box but five frames filled with capped brood.  The queen was not spotted.  Today I saw capped brood, larvae and eggs in the lower part of a couple of frames in the upper brood box.  I did not inspect any further.  Full of optimism, I added a honey super.
Hive #1- Two weeks ago, I saw lots of drones, honey being made and empty cells where there had once been brood.  I looked through the entire hive and saw no queen nor sign of a laying queen; no larvae, brood or eggs.  I did see one empty queen cell.  I worried that #1 was queenless and wondered what to do- transplant a frame with eggs from #2 so they could make a queen?  Combine #3 with #1 with the newspaper technique?  I emailed Kathy who pointed out that it had been only a bit over two weeks since it had swarmed and it takes at least that long for the new queen to hatch, mate and start laying.  So I waited until today.

 

 

There she is, on the frame in the center

Before I spotted her, I had seen capped brood, both worker and drone.

Capped worker brood

Capped brood, mostly drone cells, on foundationless comb

There was lots of honey in the supers, so I added a third box, checkerboarding three frames full of honey from one of the other supers.  We should get a good honey harvest.

The three dark frames are full of capped honey