Update on Olea's, or, it is not as easy as expected

Three days ago I looked in Olea's window and was surprised by what I saw.

Only some days earlier, all those combs were covered with bees.  (These are the last combs in the box.  There are still a dozen combs full of bees.)  Where had they gone?  I looked on the ground in front of the hive and was relieved not to see hundreds of corpses.  Have you figured it out yet?
Of course I cannot be certain, but I think they swarmed.  I looked all around our yard and into the neighbors' yard looking for a bunch of bees flying around a cluster.  No luck. 
Today I took the MAQ out of Olea's.  When I put it in, I put 2 empty bars above it.  In the 8 days since, the bees had built a large comb on one bar and a nubbin on the other.  The larger was mostly drone cell size and there was a patch of nectar, too.  I placed the bars on the hive while I retrieved the MAQ and moved the other bars back together.  I decided to place the 2 bars into the hive even though there already was so much empty comb.
Moving things shook the box a bit and the large comb fell over onto the ground.

One of the things that can make bees testy is being queenless.  After a colony swarms, there will not be a laying queen for up to 2 weeks.  Throughout my working on the hive I was besieged by angry soldier bees, adding a bit of credence to my theory of what happened to the missing bees.  It got so annoying that I fetched by honey-b-healthy sprayer and repeatedly spritzed the bees flying about my face.
I did get the hive back together with the new combs towards the back.  There are now 20 bars in Oleas.  I will look into Olea's around the 24th to look for evidence of a laying queen.

Uh-oh. Bees under threat, again

A bit has happened since the last blog.
When we left off, I had combined the boxes of the defunct #1 with #2 & 3 and had some supers of capped honey to extract.  Four days later I took a look to see how the combining had done.  In #3, the newspaper was intact but there were no bees in the added box.  I must have placed the entrance of the double screen board the wrong way so all the bees had flown out.  (Measure twice, cut once.)  I took off the box and switched in a couple of frames that had honey and pollen.   There was still brood in the lower super but the bees seemed to be back-filling.  There was a smattering of brood in the upper brood box.  Maybe the queen was moving down.  I considered putting in a queen excluder, but since I had not spotted the queen I could just as well have trapped her in the super.
#2 had chewed through the paper and there were still bees in the box.  I shook the bees off, removed the box and switched some frames in 2 as well.  I did not look into the brood box.
We had extracted the honey from #1's supers, getting about 28 pounds.  I put 4 stickies onto #3 and 10 onto #2.
I added 2 more bars to Olea's for a total of 18 now.
The bees were not going to the sand/rock water source so I changed it to peat moss.  (As of today, they are not going there, either.)

Five days ago I put in sticky boards to check the mite level.  The following day (9 days since last inspection), a couple we know came over to look into the hives with me; they have just started their first hive.  We looked through #3.  There was still brood in the lower super, perhaps even more than before.  We did not see the queen.  But I did see a bee affected by deformed wing virus.
This is not my bee, but it could have been. 
Deformed wing virus is transmitted by the mites and is a sign of parasitic mite syndrome, a bad thing for a hive to have.  I also saw on the floor of the hive the abdomen of a drone pupa with a mite attached.  (The nurse bees had removed the pupa because of the mite, a demonstration of hygienic behavior.)
I took a look at just a few inches of the sticky board and saw 10 or more mites, after only one day.  I knew the girls were in big trouble.
I went back to the shed and got MAQs and put two into both Langstroth hives with spacers.  Two days later I put a single MAQ into Olea's.  I put it on the floor of the box next to the first frame of brood I reached and put two empty bars above it.  I got this idea from a bee forum.
Today I took out the sticky boards.  There was well over 100 mites on each.

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.

The queen is dead, combine the nuc!

Today I looked into the nuc-in-a-box to see if the queen was finally laying.  I took out a frame at the edge and saw activity on the floor of the hive.  It looked like a queen surrounded by her court, except the queen was not moving.  I tried to extract her as the bees continued to surround and climb atop the queen.

After some time, I was able to retrieve the queen's carcass.  She is currently in a jar in the freezer.

There are a few possible explanations.  The bees killed this queen by balling because they did not like her or that there was another queen they liked better.  Or, the queen died for some other reason and they were all around her because of her pheromones and were trying to carry her out of the hive.  (I did see them dragging her towards the entrance.)  Or there is another queen in the hive that killed her.  In any case, I looked through the rest of the frames and saw no sign of laying.

Empty and polished cells awaiting eggs

In any case, I will wait to see what happens.  We can hope that there is another queen who will successfully mate.  I will check again in 2 weeks.
Then I took a look in the nuc I had made by splitting from #1 a couple of weeks ago.  I had put the queen from #1 in the nuc and left eggs and young larvae behind so a new queen could be made.  (In another week or so I will look to see if there is a laying queen.)  There was a lot of brood, eggs and larvae in the nuc.  I impetuously decided to put these bees into #2.  This expert does not recommend doing this to save a laying worker colony.  This one says it can work;  as a matter of fact, I sort of did it a way she suggests.
When combining hives, one is supposed to put the weaker hive on top of the stronger hive, leaving the stronger hive in its locale.  This would not work for me; I want the hive over with the others.  So this is what I did.
I covered the entrance of the nuc and took it over to the apiary.  I took all the boxes of #2 off the bottom board.  There were not many bees left in #2.  The bottom box had drawn comb with empty cell, most bees and drone brood were in the top brood box and the super was very light.  Then I thought.  If I put the nuc frames (the strong hive)  on the bottom, the returning foragers would fight with the nuc bees, so I put the top box of the weak hive (#2) on the bottom.  I shook the few bees that were on the empty comb from the bottom into the hive and then put a double screen board (that I had made) on top. I then took the frames from the once bottom box and cleaned the box by scraping off as much propolis and wax as I could.  I put the empty box on top of the double screen board with the entrance in the back relative to the other entrance.  Into the box I put the 5 frames from the nuc as well as 5 frames of drawn comb.  On top went the honey super and I closed it up.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch...  returning foragers wondered where their home had gone.

The bees are looking for their former home which had been on the pots

Later I did see a couple of bees go out the back entrance.  So, we will have to wait three weeks or so to see if this works.  Of course, if all the remaining bees of #2 die, I will remove the double screen board and reverse the boxes.  It's almost like I know what I'm doing.
It was pointed out to me that the hive stand holding #1 & 2 likely would not be able to hold the expected 150 pounds of honey, so I made braces.  Tomorrow I will put angle braces on to keep them in place.  I think this winter I will build new hive stands, either of metal pipe or 2x4s.