Walk away nuc made

The Vortex Apiary on March 28, 2015

Kathy Niven had advised me to go ahead and make a walk away.  She actually said that at this time of year one practically can't go wrong.  So today was the day to make a split from #2.
There are many ways to make a split, but I planned to use one of two, depending on spotting the queen or not.  If I saw her, I would put her in the nuc with 3 frames of brood, one frame of honey and pollen and one empty frame (that she could use for egg laying).  This is what I did with my first split a year ago.
If the queen is not spotted, one still uses 2 frames of capped and emerging brood but 2 with honey and pollen.  The fifth frame has to have eggs that the nurse bees can raise to be the new queen.  This is the walk away split.
I had not found the queen on two previous searches and resolved today to make the divide by whichever method was appropriate.  That is, it would depend on what I found first, eggs or queen.
In the top brood box I first saw two frames full of capped drone brood. I left them alone although I wished I had my scratcher with me.   The next frame had a few capped worker brood, larvae and a bunch of eggs.  And the wax was not dark.  This matters because I was going to use an O.T.S. (on the spot) queen rearing technique, namely notching.  This link explains notching really well.  I searched the frame carefully for the queen and then placed it in the nuc.  Now I needed two frames with emerging brood.  I found two frames with a good amount of capped brood and after carefully making certain that the queen was not on them, put them into the nuc.  I did not actually see any emerging brood, but I figure they are either there or will soon be.  I shook the nurse bees from the comb with drone into the nuc.  Now I needed 2 frames with honey and pollen to nourish the queen (and workers) to be.  I did not find any I like enough in the top box, so I went into the bottom.  There, towards either side of the box I found frames with nectar, capped honey and lots of pollen.  Into the nuc they went (after diligently looking for the queen).  I shook in another frame of nurse bees and closed the nuc.  Then hive #2 was put back together replacing the 5 donated frames with frames of drawn comb.
I will have to wait four weeks before checking the nuc for a laying queen.  Ultimately, this split will go to making hive #1.

Olea's hive is doing well.  The bees continue to make comb and the foragers are bringing in pollen.  This indicates that the queen is laying.  I moved the entrance feeder to the far side so I could better see the girls going in and out.  This led to some confusion when the returning foragers could not find their door, all of three inches away.
I made smoker fuel with the dried wisteria blossoms that are now covering the deck and mixing  in some pine needles. It worked great.
It has been 16 days since making the shook swarm from #3.   In another 12 days I will look to see if there is a laying queen.  I will be going to the queen rearing workshop at Davis in two weeks, so if there is a problem I may be able to re-queen.