Huzzah!

What a beautiful day!  Still hot enough to force me to inspect early in the morning, but I bought one of those neck fans from Home Depot to wear under my veil, and between that and the moisture wicking bandanas I bought my head was cool at least.  

I looked at the new hive first.  Wow, so easy to inspect compared to my original box hive, no lifting, except for the cover boards and easy to access.  The "new" bees are eating the honey and nectar from the frames I provided from the old hive that was honeybound and the queen, although I did not see her, has been busy.  There are a frame and a half of brood, both capped and uncapped larvae.  I did not see eggs, but they're small and my eyes aren't what they used to be.  A frame with brood looks similar to this (not my photo, but representative):

That is capped brood in the bottom middle, the little curly cues you see are uncapped larvae.  Surrounding the brood is bee bread and/or pollen, and on the top of the frame is capped honey, and in between the pollen and the honey is nectar that might be honey someday.  After saying all that, it means the swarm we caught, although relatively small, is happy, healthy and growing in their new home.

I then moved on to the original hive.  If you remember, I thought that hive was queenless, and it may have been for a short period if the hive swarmed.  But, Glory Be!  I have close to 3 frames of capped brood and lots of uncapped larvae in that hive now!  I'm beginning to think that there was a charged queen cell back when I was trying to compensate for the honeybound brood box and they superseded the old queen.  Again, I did not see her, but the evidence of her presence is undeniable.  So, I can cancel the queen order, and I'll be more diligent inspecting the hives during late spring early summer.  I'm not sure I'm going to do any swarm management, unless I want to sell bees.  I could split the hives into more hives, but I'm thinking one or two more max.  I may try a top bar hive, which is frameless and allows the bees to build comb and honey more naturally, and it looks fairly easy to make.

It turns out that beekeeping is a gateway into woodworking.  I've already made a nuc box/swarm trap.  I'm about to build my own bee vacuum, and I've got the plans for a top bar hive.