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.

Another split made

A few days ago, I made a walk away split from #2.  That is one without a queen but with a frame with eggs and young larvae as well as 2 frames with capped and emerging brood.  The remaining two frames have honey and pollen.  Four weeks after making the split, I will check for evidence of a laying queen, i.e., eggs or larvae.  As you can see in the above picture, there is no activity at the entrance of the nuc, but it is only 4 days old.  The nurse bees are still in the box.

This is looking into the nuc through a vent hole.  The propolis was built mostly by previous occupants.
Speaking of propolis, I sold 8 ounces of my extract to a local health food store!  Julie's attractive labels helped.

I did have some help making the split.  A couple of weeks ago I got a call from Tony, a neighbor of Roberta's.  He just started keeping bees this year and had some questions.  I went to his home to look into his hive and met Damara, a friend of his and a first year beek.  They came over to visit my apiary and help to assemble the nuc.

At last, some good news

Yesterday it was time to look into Olea's hive to see if there was a laying queen.  In a top bar hive, the bees will partially attach some of the comb to side walls.  If one does not cut it free before moving the bar, the comb will break.  (I can attest to that).  I had been using a steak knife to cut the comb but I recently purchased a top bar hive tool which I used yesterday for the first time.  It was easier than the steak knife but it still required careful use.
Anyway... I first smoked the bees as Olea's colony has been feisty.  Instead of starting at the back, I looked in the window and located a bar that was not yet completely drawn (#13 I think) removed it and set it in the little space behind the follower board.  I did it this way because I do not have a top bar comb stand (or here) and I wanted to avoid a repeat of the comb falling onto the ground.  I removed and inspected each comb moving towards the front of the hive.  The bees were easily aroused and I did not hesitate to use more smoke.  On #10 I saw larvae and on #9 I saw the queen!  Her phenotype suggests that she has carniolan genes as she is darker and a bit smaller than a typical italian and a little larger than a carni.  Of course, I am not 100% certain that Olea's swarmed and that this is a new queen, but that is a reasonable assumption.  And if she is new, I hope that the personality of the colony will change for the better as their present demeanor is unpleasant.
#2 is still not strong but there is excellent brood pattern in both brood boxes.  I did not see the queen.
I did not inspect #3 but checked its honey production.  The top super had moderate honey but the side frames were still empty.  I deliberated whether to add a super and finally decided to do so.  I went to the shed, grabbed a new super with frames and put it on.  However, the bottom of the frame was uneven and left a gap.  (I will have to even it out somehow.)  Back to the shed for a different super.  Took one out and saw that 3 frames in it had honey in the cells as well as ants all over.  Shook all the ants off, scraped off propolis and burr wax, added 7 more frames and put the super on #3 which now has three supers.  I think the fall harvest will be good.

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.