Where did it come from, and where did it go?

It really is swarm season!  Across the street, a swarm was captured in a bait box. 
Yesterday I saw this on the grape vine:

It was a pretty large cluster.  I assume it came from #2 since I had seen a swarm cell in there a week before.  But assumptions are often incorrect.
Today there was no activity around the entrance of my bait box so I figured they were not interested.  (It may be that the bait box is directly above 2 active nucs.)  So I called a bee guild member to see if he was interested in collecting it.  He called me back within a half-hour, and just before he called, the cluster had taken flight.  He could hear the buzzing over the phone.  I followed them down the street, where, instead of going into a hive as I expected, they clustered on a tree branch in front of Pauline's house.  This is approximately 150 feet from where they had been. 
About 2 hours later I went to see if the new owners were home yet.  They were not, nor were the bees.  Where they went is unknown- re-cluster or new home.
I do know that there are quite a few bee hives in this neighborhood.

Good news, bad news

Where to begin? 
First, some good news: spring is here and the honey flow is on.

Now an update: 5 days ago two fellow pickleball players and semi-beginning beeks, Terry and Karen, went into the hives with me.  We removed the old MAQs and spacers from all 3 hives and did an alcohol wash on #2 & 3.  (#3- 4, #2- 7)  The counts were higher than I wanted, but I think they are ok.  At least, I will not be treating again until after the honey harvest.  In #2, we took out a frame to look for the queen (Terry and Karen have never spotted their queen) and found an uncapped queen cell.  It had royal jelly in it, and since it was at the bottom of the frame, I figure it to be a swarm cell.  The edges of the cell go a little bent when taking out the frame, but I do not expect that will be a problem.  We did not look for any other queen cells.  So, #2 may swarm in the next week.  If it does, and I see it, I will call a bee guild member to collect it or perhaps it will go into the bait box.  All three hives looked healthy.
Now some bad news:  I looked in the window of Olea's hive a few days ago.  The population looked very small, smaller than I thought it should be even after casting two swarms.  The distal 12 or so combs were bare of bees and there was even an exposed, capped queen cell.

No nurse bees equals a dead pupa
So I went into Olea's today to see what was going on.  I started at bar 13 and worked all the way to the front.  The findings:
1.  Many wax moth pupae on top of the bars.
2.  The population of the colony seems to me ~90% drones.
3.  Very little honey in the frames I examined.
4.  One comb with small patch of capped worker brood and larvae, bar 11 or 12.
5.  No queen spotted.  No eggs seen.
Conclusion- Olea's may be queenless; the larvae I saw are drones.  Of course, things may be ok.  After all, I did not see any capped drone brood.  But being pessimistic, I worry that Olea's will succumb and possibly become a varroa bomb.  So... one of the combs I removed had, unbeknownst to me, been attache to the floor of the box, and it broke off.  It was old, dark comb and had only some beebread in it.  I used the space thus serendipitously provided to place a single MAQ next to the small patch of brood.
To end with some good news:  I checked the nuc containing the secondary swarm.  There was drawn comb on three of the five frames and capped brood on two of them.  The queen successfully mated and the nuc will probably make it.  I could use it to repopulate Olea's if it does not make it.

They're all in the box!

After collecting Olea's afterswarm the other day, some bees were still in a small cluster; this always happens. This cluster was the size of a cantaloupe.   I was going to let them return to the parent hive, make their way to the nuc or just die.  Early yesterday morning, Maidi suggested that I shake them into a box and take them to the nuc- an excellent idea.  I immediately did so.  I put the box beneath the nuc.  But you can take a bee to a nuc but you can't make it go in.  They just stayed in the box all day, all night and today.
Since it was several hundred bees (maybe a thousand) I decided to help them into the nuc. At first I wanted to make a ramp using the flap of the box, but could not arrange things for that.  So, I poured the bees onto the top of the nuc, expecting them to crawl down the face into the door; but, no.  After sometime, I lifted the lid about 1/2 inch and waited.  In short time, two bees crawled into the hive.  So I propped the lid up, went inside and set the timer for 30 minutes.  I took a look, and almost all of them were inside.  I gave them another 20 minutes, et voila!- they were all inside.  I closed the lid and went in for dinner.

Olea's hive casts an afterswarm

This afternoon, while putting in drip emitters, a loud buzzing caused me to look up.  Bees were pouring out of Olea's hive....again.  The swarm clustered about 30 feet from the hive on the vines behind the apple trees.

The cluster as seen from the lawn

A closer view of the cluster

A secondary swarm, or afterswarm, is different from the primary in a couple of ways.  Firstly, it is smaller, and secondly, it has a virgin queen.  This means it takes longer for the queen to start laying in the new hive; a couple of weeks as opposed to as soon as comb is drawn.  (By the way, two days ago I looked into the nuc with the primary swarm.  There was new drawn comb and some capped brood.)

After I had made sure that the bees stayed in the box, I put in 5 frames and moved it next to the first swarm. 

If it survives, I will have two nucs, the number I want.  Future swarms, if any, will go to a fellow beek.

It's swarm season!

A proud beekeeper

It is spring, so naturally much has been happening in the apiary.  I thought I would start with the above photo of a happy, young beekeeper working her hive.
All three hives now have two honey supers on and there is nectar in the top one.  It looks like there will be a good honey harvest this year.  If/when I put on a third box, the hives will be so high that working them will be difficult.  I am considering keeping the height under control by harvesting any boxes filled with capped honey through the summer.  We will see.  Olea's hive has its full complement of 22 bars.  All entrance reducers are out.
The pry scale works well, however, the hives are so heavy that the slat of wood that the scale presses against cannot withstand the pressure.  Back to the drawing board to.  I need some engineering help.
I have been wanting to make splits and therefore have gone into the hives more than once looking for suitable frames.  Alas, no joy.  I have seen healthy brood patterns but no eggs, on different occasions because there was not enough light, it started to rain or I just can not see them.  A neighbor who is interested in beekeeping has joined me on these attempts.
One day the bees were unusually defensive chasing us when we were outside.  It was a hot day, 80 degrees, and being overheated and overcrowded are two reasons why bees are defensive.  That is when I put a second super on each hive.  They have not been aggressive since, but that does not prove crowding was the cause.
Eight days ago, Olea and I were looking into #3.  We saw the queen laying eggs and a swarm cell.  I considered possible actions and decided to let them swarm and do my utmost to capture them.  I set up a bait box in its usual place.
Then, a few days later, a swarm came from the trees behind the house across the street and clustered at the top of Paul's oak tree.  The next day the cluster was gone, whither to, a mystery.  (Not my bait box.) 
Yesterday, when I went out to mow the lawn, Olea's hive swarmed.  I saw them flowing out of the hive, like orientation flights but magnitudes greater.  I was excited to see this for the first time.  They clustered on the fence next to Paul's.  The bulk of the cluster was beneath the stringer.

I mowed the lawn, giving the cluster a chance to settle in.  Then I brushed to bees into a nuc box with its door blocked, set the box by the fence and waited  a while to be sure the queen was in the box (the bees would leave the box if she were not and re-cluster around her). 

Then I put the lid on and carried the box across the yard to the "potting shed" where the nucs usually live.  I put in five frames, two with scraped foundation, two new foundation and one foundationless.

I put the lid on and unblocked the door. 

At the door of their new home

They were still in the nuc this morning and they had started house cleaning.  I could see debris below the hive.  There were still a few bees hanging around the cluster site as the smell lingers for some time.

Hive #3 has not yet, to my knowledge, swarmed.

What is going on?

The other day I cleaned out the trays below the screened bottoms.  There were a lot of bees on the tray of #3.  This was curious but I did not think about it much.  Today I saw a lot of bees Fthe front of the hive, like bearding, but it did not seem hot enough for  that (it was in mid-60s).

Front of the hive

Backside

The tray was pretty much covered with bees before I brushed it

I started walking closer to get a look and, while still over 10 feet away, a bee stung me on the side of  the nose!  (I tried to get a picture for your amusement, but the swelling did not show on the selfie.)
I wanted to know what was going on, and figuring that there might be something odd happening inside, I suited up and went in.
There was some nectar in the super that I put on a week ago.  (One week ago I took out the Apivar strips and put supers on all the hives.  I also added four bars to Olea's.)  The were 3 frames of capped drone in the top box.  In the bottom box, there was capped brood and larvae of all ages, including very young.  I did not see eggs nor the queen.  There was one empty queen cup, no swarm of supercedure cells.
So, everything looked fine inside the hive.  I guess they were just bearding, but I have no explanation for the increased aggressiveness.  I did take the entrance reducer out in to increase ventilation.  As I type this it has clouded over and cooled a bit and I can see that they are all back inside.

They really like their new water source!

 There will often be even more bees drinking than in this picture.  They seem to like the moss a bit more than the sand. 

While watching  them leave the bird bath and fly back to their hives, I saw several flying out of the yard.  I followed their flight path and discovered a feral hive in the redwoods behind us.  This must be the swarm I saw fly up that way a year or two ago.  I can not see the hive entrance itself, just bees flying around the general area.