The combining did not go as well as expected

The ground in front of hive #2

Close-up of the carnage

A swarm for Olea's hive, not

A small brown trout on the Beaverhead River in Montana

There have been changes in the apiary since the last post
The day after capturing the swarm, Karly and I went into #1.  Karly is positive she saw the queen run quickly from one frame into the box below.  We did not see her again.  Most of the queen cells I had seen on the earlier inspection were gone; we did see two empty queen cells with the tops chewed off.  I am certain there is a queen in #1.  I will take a look this week to check for larvae.  I also exchanged the drone frame.   The frame only had some pupae, so I tediously picked them out.  There were 349 total pupae, 14 of them had mites- 5%, an ok number for now.
Back to the swarm.  I had noticed that there was a casaba melon sized clump of bees left on the Hebe bush.  The day before we left for Dillon, Montana, I noted bees still flying around the clump.  I could see many of them flying to Olea's hive and some returning from that general direction.  I looked closely at the clump and saw bees doing the waggle dance and could tell the direction was toward the apiary.  I realized that the bees were scouting for a hive meaning that the queen was still probably in the bush.  I hoped that they would decide on Olea's hive; after all, it was a nice place to live and already had comb, as well as a few thousand bees.  I decided that when evening came, I would cut the bush and move the remaining workers, and queen of there, to the top-bar hive.
Then, the bees took off from the bush and flew slowly in the general direction of the apiary, then over the fence and out of sight towards Viewpoint.  I went over there, but the swarm was nowhere to be seen.  I figured that I had not moved the queen into Olea's and that the bees there would eventually die.  I emailed Tom Seeley describing the situation and he said "I'm sorry to report that your hive is probably queenless, but of course, time will tell.   Give them a week and take a look inside for eggs and larvae."
We returned from a terrific fishing trip yesterday.  There I fished the Beaverhead, Big Hole and Ruby rivers.  These three rivers flow together to form the Jefferson, a tributary of the Missouri.  We floated in drift boats with guides on the Big Hole where Karly caught the most fish!
I took a look into Olea's- new comb with nectar and pollen but no larvae or eggs and no queen seen.  A doomed colony.  Then, today, I took the bees from the TBH and after spraying them with Honey-B-Healthy, I shook them into hive #2, giving it a big boost in population.  I moved the TBH away and left the comb with nectar near the hive for the bees to clean up.  

A swarm for Olea's hive

The swarm in the yard

Beginning to move towards the hebe hedge

The start of a much larger cluster

Maidi called me yesterday when I was in Santa Cruz waiting for marimba.  "The bees just swarmed and are clustered by the lilies!"
It was dusk when I got home and I decided it was too dark for me to capture the swarm, but I did get the top-bar hive ready.
I had saved comb from the hive after its demise to use when repopulating.  However, I had discovered just a day earlier that a rat had gotten into the comb and chewed away much of it, presumably for the beebread.  I had broken off the chewed comb and started processing the wax.  I took the two remaining combs and bars with an inch or so of comb still attached and opened the hive.  To my surprise, a paper wasp had started a nest inside the hive.

The wasp is on the right, mostly hidden

I gently removed the wasp and the nest in a jar.  This morning the wasp had flown away.
I cleaned the propolis off the sides of the top bars, arranged twelve bars with the full combs toward the front, left space in the middle and placed the false back.
This morning I went to move the cluster into Olea's hive.  Access to the swarm was restricted.  There was very little space below them and there was a main trunk next to them.  I cut away a couple of branches, moved some dirt and slid a shallow pan beneath them, then vigorously shook the branch so the bees fell into the pan.  Of course, many landed on the ground, too.
It was then that I realized that the swarm went further into the hedge and was about twice as large as it had seemed.
I carried my tray of bees to the apiary and dumped them into Olea's hive and went back to the hebe for seconds.  Then I put the lid on the hive and went in for breakfast.  This gave the bees on the ground time to crawl back onto the bush.  After breakfast and crossword, I repeated the shake and dump a couple of more times getting most of the bees into Olea's hive.  The rest will eventually make their way over following the scent from the Nasonov glands.

Fanning at their new home with Nasonov glands exposed

How is hive #2 doing?

I'm glad you asked that question.  I opened #2 today because I was wondering myself.
There were some bees in the top box and one small area with nectar, but no new comb.
The bottom box seems filled with bees.  There still is no new comb on the side frames.  I was happy to see 4 frames with both sides filled with brood and a grapefruit-sized patch of capped brood on a 5th frame.  The queen was not seen today.
It looks like hive #2 is thriving, so I will not replace the queen.  So, unless things change or I decide to populate Olea's hive with the split, hive #3 is back.

Queen cells

It has been nine days since making the split and I took a look into #1 to make sure that the bees were making queen cells.  Bees will quickly be aware of the queens absence and start making a new one.  They will build queen cells around some eggs and feed the larvae extra royal jelly.  Some beekeepers say to wait 4 weeks to check for eggs.  I just wanted to see the expected queen cells and share them with you.
First I looked on the underside of the lower super where there had been brood last week- queen cells.

I then looked on the underside of the top brood box- queen cells.

I took out the drone frame planning to cull the drones for varroa control, more queen cells.

I looked no further.
Isn't nature amazing?

Both split and #2 seem to be doing well

Front door of the split box

It has been a week since we made the split.  There has been a lot of activity at the door since yesterday with foragers leaving and returning and a small orientation flight this afternoon.  Now I have to decided what to do with the nuc.  Some possibilities: transform the nuc frames to fit into Olea's top bar hive; use the queen to replace #2 queen; reactivate hive #4.  The original plan had been to use the queen to replace the #2 queen because she did not seem to be laying much.  (More about that below.)
I do want to repopulate Olea's hive.  Modifying Langstroth frames can be done but involves more work and mess than I would want to take on.  Making a "shook swarm" looks complicated, but there may be someway I can accomplish it, perhaps with someone's (Kathy Niven) help.  And we can also hope to capture a swarm.  I have no plans to buy bees for Olea's hive.
I looked into #2 to see if the queen had started laying in the frame I inserted last week.  Unfortunately I failed to mark the frame.  The one  I suspect was the transplant had nectar and pollen, no larvae or eggs seen.  But we learned last week that the bees will flood the eggs with nectar, so it's possible that the nectar-filled cells had eggs in them.  In any case, there were a lot of bees in the box, covering 7-8 frames.  There were at least 3 frames with brood (I did not inspect all the frames).  I put the top brood box back on.  It had only one frame with drawn comb on both sides, several with comb on one side, the drone frame and empty foundationless frames.
I did not have more frames with drawn comb available because yesterday Bruce and Gregg traded me five empty frames for drawn comb.  They are getting a package of bees this week.

Split made

Beekeepers at work

I had emailed Kathy Niven regarding making a nuc and she graciously came over this afternoon to assist me.  In the process of making the nuc I learned some new things and made some discoveries.
I need to correct (emend? amend?) something I said in the last post.  In regards to the nectar in the cells in the brood frames, I had said that I thought the bees were making this a honey frame- incorrect.  Bees will flood new-laid eggs with nectar, so this was an area of eggs.
When we looked at the frames in the bottom honey super, there was capped brood and drone cells in the lower third of many of them.  That is why some people use a queen excluder.  Until these last inspections, I had thought that there was only brood in the top brood box.  In fact, the brood area extends from the bottom of the bottom box through the top brood box and into the bottom of the first super. That queen is really working hard!
Here's how we made the nuc.  Because we saw the queen, we put her with the frame of brood and nurse bees into the nuc.  Kathy thinks that it is more assured that the parent hive will make a new queen.  I also think it gets the nuc off to a quicker start because it already has a laying queen rather than the three weeks or so to make a queen, for her to mate and then start laying.  One of the sources I used actually discourages walk-away splits for that reason and says to either use a queen or at least queen cells.  We then added two more frames with capped and emerging brood.  The fourth frame had honey and pollen and the fifth was an empty frame with drawn comb.  Selecting which combs to use took some looking and the girls got a bit upset.  I got one sting on my index finger through the glove.  When all five frames were in the nuc, we placed it on the stand that previously held #3, shook another frame of nurse bees into it and closed it up.   Kathy wisely pointed out the need for a cover in light of the upcoming rain and suggested a brick to keep the cover from blowing away.  Looking at the nuc later on, I saw ants on the stand so I placed bowls under the legs and filled them with water.

But wait, there's more!  Kathy advised "checker-boarding" comb with honey and empty comb in the top super to encourage the bees to go up there to draw comb and make more honey.  This is a well established manipulation and one more thing I now know about.  It was in doing this that I discovered the brood in the lower super.
Finally, over coffee (see above picture), I asked Kathy about hive #2.  She suggested putting a frame of drawn comb between two frames of brood so the queen will have more room to lay.  Later in the afternoon, I did just that.
In a week I will take a look into #1 to see if there are any queen cells.  I'll look into #2 to see if there are eggs/brood in the frame I inserted today.