The queen excluder seems to be working

Just a brief note.  I looked into the super of #3.  There are still small patches of capped brood but no larvae.  The queen is no longer laying up there, either because of the excluder or her own desire.  Soon I will remove the super, harvest the small amount of honey and then treat all the hives with apivar.

First use of a queen excluder

After extracting the honey ( 3 gallons or so), I put the stickies back onto the hives.  The expectation was that the bees would clean them up, then I could remove and store them.  After all the supers were off, I would treat with Apivar.  In case you did not read through the instructions (on the link), the Apivar strips should be used while there are no honey supers.  Like, right after the honey harvest, or now, in my case.  I also wanted to treat Olea's hive at the same time, so I need to get the honey from there.  I needed to wait a bit for that, too.  (see end of blog from 8/9).
In any case, I went today to take off the supers.  I had put the escape  board in tho make it easier.  In the first super, there were three frames of clean, empty comb, but the rest of the comb had nectar in it and the bees were swarming about.  Now what?  (Remember, I don't know what I'm doing.)
I decided to just take off all the supers and let the bees clean them up away from the hive.

What you can not appreciate in the above picture is the small cloud of bees around and below the supers and the loud buzzing.
I did remember that there was some brood in the lowest super on #3, so I checked again, and sure enough, there was brood on two frames, even young larvae.  I did not want to take this super off, but it looked like the queen was not going to stop laying up there.  Now what?
Aha!  I will put the queen excluder in!  Leaving the hive opened, I went to the shed to get the excluder.  Of course it was at the bottom of the rearmost stack of boxes and other hive parts.  After I moved everything out of the way and retrieved an excluder I put everything back, a bit more organized than it had been.
Back to the hive where there was near chaos with bees everywhere and a few yellow jackets trying to get in.  I guess leaving the hive opened was not the best idea.  I put the queen excluder in and then examined each frame in the super 4 times for the queen.  I did not see here so I closed up everything.
It takes 21 days for a worker to develop from an egg.  In 3 weeks, I will take off the super, harvest any honey left in it, take the honey from Olea's and treat all colonies with Apivar.

I'm in business

So, what happened with the nuc?

Four weeks ago, I made a "walk away" split with eggs, larvae, capped brood and nurse bees from #2.  Today was the day I had marked to check if the bees had successfully made a queen who then successfully mated and had started laying.
I had been optimistic because I had seen bees bringing in pollen, usually a sign that there is brood present.

The first good indication was the number of bees in the colony.  This was definitely more than the 3 frames I had put in.
On the second frame I looked at there was capped brood and larvae, so I knew there was a queen.  I decided to look at the other frames in order to choose one to photograph for you.
I decided the first one was best and here is what I saw:

Look closely at this picture.  Do you notice anything special?
How about in the middle a third up from the bottom?
Here is a close up:

On another note- every time I opened the door to the shed, many bees tried to get in.  There were also a lot of bees flying around a frame that had very little if any nectar.

It dawned on me that this is probably because the honey from has ended and the foragers are looking for any available food.  So yesterday I put entrance reducers in all the hives including the nuc.
I also went into Olea's to take the honey.  There was a fair amount of uncapped honey.  On the frames that did have capped honey, only the top half was capped.  I did not take any comb from Olea's, but I will in a couple of weeks.

Now it is bees in the garage, or, no escape

I have been removing the supers to harvest the honey using an escape board to clear them of bees.  Yet many bees stubbornly held onto the frames.   I used my shop-vac as a blower to get the bees off.  This worked pretty well, but still a few bees hung on and ended up in the garage.
There was one more super on #3 to remove.  The bees were just not leaving even though I waited more than 24 hours, so this afternoon I removed it. 
I had my suspicions as to why they were not escaping.  I examined each frame, and sure enough, two of them had small patches of capped brood as well as some larvae.  I carefully searched for the queen and, fortunately, she was not there.  The two frames with some brood as well as three with unripe honey and five frames with drawn comb were put back onto #3.
I had 5 frames of capped honey and the bees were all over it.  I got out the shop vac and attempted to blow them off.  As soon as one frame was cleared and I moved to the next, the girls were back on the first.  So I just blew off as many as I could and took the box into the garage.  In the garage now is reminiscent of the shed a couple of days ago, although considerably fewer bees.
I will start extracting in the next few days.
In a couple of days, I will be able to check the nuc for a laying queen.

Oops!

I have been removing the supers for the fall honey harvest.  BTW, there is less honey than I had anticipated.
In any case, some frames in the super had nothing or only nectar or unripe honey in them.  I intend to place these back on the hives.  I was storing one in the shed and accidentally left the shed door open.  When I went to close the door, I was in for a surprise.