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!
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