Good news, bad news

First the bad news.
It has been a week since last checking #1 so it was time to see if it was queen right or not.  I took a look around and saw no sign of  a laying queen nor, thankfully, of a laying worker.  I did see an unopened queen cell.

It was on a frame of otherwise empty drawn comb.  It was a bit smaller than the usual queen cell.  There were no nurse bees in attendance, so I concluded that it was probably dead. 
I did a newspaper combine of the bottom brood box onto #2 and the top brood box onto #3 leaving the queen cell intact.  On #3, out of laziness, I put the brood box on top of the vivaldi box and then realized I did not have an inner cover so I got a double screen board and used that, making sure that the entrance was on the top.
Now the good news!
There were 14 frames of capped honey in the supers of #1, so there will be a spring honey harvest!

Double screen out, or where's the door?

It has been nearly 4 weeks since putting a box with a laying queen on the box with the laying worker, separating them with a double screen board.  9 days ago I saw an egg in the bottom box so I left the double screen in place.  Now I figure it is time to finish the combining process.
After taking off the super, the top box and the screen, I took a look at one of the central frames from the bottom box.  I still saw ratty capped drone cells and what looked like emerging drones.  Then I noticed that they were dead drones.

I removed one but it looked normal, just dead.  If mites were responsible they were long gone.
I put the box with the queen on the bottom, then reassembled the hive with just one super.
Now the foragers that had been using the back door will need to find their way around to the front.  Too bad I can not just put up a sign pointing the way.

The back of #2 after removing the double screen board and the back door

#1 is possibly queenless

On April 6 I made a split from #1 by taking its queen, some nurse bees, brood, honey and pollen and putting them in a nuc.  There were plenty of eggs left for the bees to make a new queen.  The queen that had been put in the nuc eventually ended up in #2.  She is in the top brood box separated from the bottom with a double screen.  The bottom had a laying worker and when I last looked, 8 days ago, I saw an egg in the bottom box.  I soon will take out the double screen.  The foragers from the top box have been using a small entrance in the back so they will have to learn the new orientation.
#1 had been a strong colony and I figured that they would easily make a new queen and thrive.  I took a look in 3 days ago, 38 days after making the split.  It takes 16 days for a queen to emerge after the egg has been laid.  It then takes a couple of days to mate, maybe a week to rest and so one expects a laying queen in about 4 weeks, counting from laying.  So, naturally, I expected a laying queen.  I saw this:

Since you are all experts by now, you recognize this as a queen cell that has been opened on the side.  This is what an emerged queen will do to her yet to emerge sister queens.  So I knew that at least one queen had emerged.  Unfortunately, I did not see a her nor evidence of a laying queen (eggs and/or larvae). 
The time it takes to make a laying queen can frequently be five days longer and even longer if bad weather prevents the mating flight.  Still, 5 1/2 weeks is really stretching the limits.  I will check again in a couple of days.  If there is no queen I will just combine #1 with #2 & 3.  I have no more nucs, so the apiary will be short a hive.
By the way, Olea's hive seems to be thriving.  I have added several bars and they continue to make new comb.

It may seem like I know what I am doing

Today I checked the nuc-in-a-box to see if there was any queen activity.  I saw no eggs, larvae or brood cells and no queen.  I figured I should combine this hive with #2.  The question was how to do it.
I wanted to get the frames out of the box so that I could return it to Kathy (even though it was old and coming apart a bit at the corners), so at first I planned to take the frames from the (nuc) box and put them in the (#2) bottom box below the double screen board.  But there were still a lot of bees and capped drone cells.  Not enough room, or too much work, to follow plan A.  So what was plan B? 
I did not see any evidence of laying workers in the nuc, so I figured a newspaper combine would work.  Then I had to decide where to put the nuc box, above the bottom box with laying workers or above the box with the queen.  I figured that I still  need to keep the laying workers exposed to the queen and brood pheromones to suppress the laying workers ovaries.  One source said this can take 3 weeks and it has only been 10 days so far.  Now should it be placed over the brood box or hover the honey super?  Over the brood box.

Today's final set-up of #2.  Bottom brood box are the laying workers from queenless #2.  Next up is the double screen board.  The second brood box has the laying queen from the nuc I made with the queen from #1.  The two sheets of newspaper have 3 slits cut into them.  The funky box contains the queenless nuc-in-a-box.  The frames in there have a lot of pollen and honey.  When the combining is completed, I hope to swap the frames with resources into the other boxes.  On top is a honey super with hardly any honey.  I sprayed the bees that were still on it with Honey-B-Healthy and spritzed a bit into the box to minimize fighting.
Meanwhile... Foragers were returning to the site of their old hive.

What happened to our house?

Most experts say to move a hive either 2 feet or 2 miles.  And moving should be done at night when all the foragers have returned.  So what should I do with all these hard-working bees who are now homeless.
Well, I put a nuc with frames of drawn comb on the table and the bees quickly ran inside.

This evening I intend to cover the opening and move the nuc over near the other hives.  Of course, the box that these bees formerly called home has no opening so they will not be able to enter it.  Perhaps enough odor of home will pass through the slits in the newspaper and the two brood boxes to lure them in.  Or they will go into another hive.  Or something else.