Lost swarm -- newspaper combine

If you compare this picture to the one that I took last week you will notice a big difference.  The hive on the right has been covered with bearding bees for the last month or so but when I went out on September 3, the bees on the outside were gone.  This was the hive with some swarm cells and it appears that it threw out a swarm.  I decided to combine my nuc hive with this one to give it a productive queen more quickly, and take some of teh swarm cells out of this hive to make a new nuc.  There probably isn't time for a new nuc to establish itselt this late in the season but I couldn't bear to waste good queen cells.

A frame out of the middle hive that swarmed dhows some brood around the edges here but nothing in the middle.

The other side of the same frame though shows a lot of capped brood.  So there is considerable brood here to help this hive survive and build in what's left of the season.

This frame shows brood in various stages and some swarm cells on the top (it's actually the bottom in the hive) of the frame.  I decided to introduce the nuc queen through a combine so I moved a few frames with good queen cells into the old nuc body to make a new nuc and cut off the rest.

I didn't take any pictures while doing the combine as I was too busy with two hives open at the same time, but this is the end result.  You see the newspaper under the top box on the middle hive.  The bees will have to chew through this which gives them an opportunity to gradually get used to each other.

I also got into the hive on the far left -- my oldest hive of the three.  It had quite a bit of honey in the top super.  This frame though had some odd comb build in sort of a wedge shape in the middle of this frame  I guess the comb was damaged somehow and this is how the bees repaired it.

This frame shows some honey along the top and some drone brood along the bottom (note I am holding the frame upside down to take the picture).

This hive seemed strong with lots of bees and lots of brood.

The back of the same frame shows the same.

Here's a frame showing uncapped brood.

Here is a lot of capped and uncapped brood in fairly new looking comb.

This frame had two queen cups located in an indented area in the middle of the frame rather than on the bottom of the frame where they are usually found.  I found the same on another frame in this hive as well.  These bees seem to be a bit creative in their comb building.